Day in, day out, Nevada citizens have been inundated with hysterical, Chicken Little warnings about not having enough money for highway construction projects and are told that there just isn’t any money anywhere in the budget to divert to this pressing priority. Then you pick up this morning’s Nevada Appeal and see that the Department of Traffic and Safety spent $2,100 to buy 18 new bikes for kindergartners at Seeliger Elementary School in Carson City.
Laurie Ann Grimes, who approved the expenditure, said it was an excellent use of taxpayer dollars. “It’s fun, it has emotional benefits, and most importantly, it’s about health,” she told the Appeal. “This is a fun way to keep the kids healthy.”
Since when is it the Department of Traffic and Safety’s job to “keep kids healthy”?
And why are taxpayers buying bikes for kids at all? Isn’t that something that, I don’t know, maybe PARENTS should be doing?
Couldn’t this money have been better used to buy these kids some of those textbooks we always hear the education bureaucrats whining about not having?
Sure, $2,100 is a relatively minor amount. But how many more of these non-priority, inappropriate expenditures are there out there? $2,100 here and $2,100 there…and sooner or later it adds up to “real” money.
Posted on June 1st, 2007 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: Carson City
excellent point! is this even a legal expenditure?