I thought it was a bad idea until I read this. Now I’m torn.
The problem with deferred maintenance is that it can always be deferred. But if you let yourself defer maintenance, you’re painting yourself into a corner, and it’s a corner with a floor that’s giving way, oh, and the ceiling doesn’t look too sturdy, either. Good luck now. Now you’re in the Fram Zone. (Fram Oil Filters. Motto: “You can pay me now, or you can pay me later.”)*
Every building or other capital project has a maintenance schedule and a yearly average maintenance cost. If you calculate the amount properly, and set it aside each year, you can pay for the renovations when it’s time to make them. But maintenance isn’t sexy. It doesn’t impress people because it doesn’t look like anything is being done. It garners no votes. So that never happens.
Most organizations do have a yearly maintenance budget, but they’re usually not allowed to accumulate unspent funds, so they can’t possibly be used for renovations, and they’re always the first thing raided when things get a little tight or when someone wants to fund a bigger project than they have a budget for.
Neglecting maintenance is habit forming. It’s a bad habit. Not only am I in favor of performing needed renovations, if I ever became rich I think I’d start the Maintenance Party. If you can’t afford to maintain it, shut it down. Don’t try to play chicken with entropy. Entropy always wins.
The poster shows an oil filter vs an engine rebuild.
Waiting and putting off maintenance until something needs to be fixed immediately = a whole bunch of money, especially if you wait a bit too long and it gets damaged.
Look at it this way: the passengers on Flight 93 gave their lives to save the dome from destruction, and the GOP won’t spend our money to do so. Courage comes in many forms, you see.
When half the bridges in my town are in a sub-standard state of repair, then I have no problem with them walking under a dome that could fall in on their heads.
There’s a difference between wondering why a record setting do nothing Congress that’s spent 20% of the little it has done passing post office name changes isn’t doing it and why Democrats with an extremely tiny real window of control didn’t make it a higher priority.
And you might introduce yourself to the laws of physics and entropy as to why it should be a higher priority with the passage of time.
It’s obvious to me what’s going on. This is all just a power play. They are dragging their heels on fixing the old facility because they want a completely new, state of the art dome. One with a retractable roof, luxury skyboxes, and a Jumbotron that will scream “FILIBUSTER!” in twenty foot tall letters.
Seriously, well put.