Well you did. As you can see in this story link from today's Daily Sentinel the City of Grand Junction (why my surprise) has decided to invest $2 million in energy-saving technologies they believe will pay back their investment within 15 years.
First of all the term investment seems to be used a little loosely by these people since the hope would be that you might make more than cost and this seems unlikely given deterioration of capital structures, replacement costs and associated labor fees over the life of the products.
But let's pretend for a moment that it's true, what kind of economic process is involved in deciding that now is the time to make an investment with the recoupment in 15 years; which once again we assume to be an optimistic if not fanciful prediction.
It's not surprising that this lunge towards expenditure seems to be originated in the city's mysterious Neighborhood Pest ..errr..we mean Services Department which seems to have a such a broad mission statement that we are expecting them to launch their own satellite at any time.
Our favorite line from the story is "..make city buildings operate more efficiently." I'm certain many of us would like to see that and they might even be able to recoup some income by renting out the empty offices.
Poor science, dumb economics, dubious management.
BUILD A POLICE DEPARTMENT-REMEMBER WHEN THERE WAS NO HIGHER PRIORITY: SIX MONTHS AGO.
