We had a situation here in my county where the farmers and the county surveyor wanted to straighten out a river to get the water drained off faster. (Much to the protest of the city downstream for obvious reasons). Of course a lot of people were up in arms including myself and we went to public meetings to voice our concern.
Turns out just like the VHS debacle, public meetings were just a protocol they had to abide by, and the county was hell bent to do their thing regardless. The crazy thing is the county would loose in court and do it anyway. Then back in court and lose again and they were back at dredging. And then back in court again. I wounder how much it cost the taxpayer to keep fighting it even though they kept losing and went right back to dredging again.
The river seems to be mostly untouched so the county must have gotten tired of spending our tax money, or the bums got voted out of office.
I will say I've never seen such ignorant people. Made me lose faith in the general public. One guy blamed the flooding on algae and another couple that built in a flood plane on a series of lakes that flood every year blamed it on the river. I shouldn't have but I asked them out loud if their relator told them they lived in a flood plain and they knew their lakes were essentially a river. The couple had no clue.
In Ft. Wayne Indiana the local government was bound and determined to build a baseball stadium with local tax money even though the referendum got defeated over and over again. Finally they somehow managed to build it even though most taxpayers were against it! My brother who lives in the city had his property assessment go up to pay for it! Nobody wanted the GD thing!
A local school was bound and determined to build a planetarium even though the local taxpayers defeated it in a referendum time again. Guess what? It got built and the local taxpayers got the bill!
This is the problem with government even in Canada if not worse in Canada. The friend of a friend owns the company that built that ball stadium. The Gov loves jobs like that from the trickle down tax income. I am sure a golf buddy had this idea to build this and run it up the political flag pole.
Quebec has a big problem with poor shoty concrete on government bridge work. Cost the public millions and millions and the sub contractor is no longer in business or running under another name who watered down the concrete.
All in all we are probably more pissed we're not making a killing on some of these projects and some one is and blaming it on the politicians.
Cheers Don.