The world’s tallest building in
I was wondering whether our Town Council could suffer the same fate if we throw caution to the winds by being lavish in our spending. What lesson can we draw from here?
As a custodian of public money, it is good to remind ourselves to be prudent ; to get the best value for our hard earned money while we strive to maintain our S/CC charges for as low as and as long as possible !
Yet it is so easy to be frivolous in our spending especially in the light of our rising expectations. To cite but a few examples of our potential pitfalls that could easily lead us down the slippery road to financial ruin :
* Provide CCTV to all common areas, including lifts, staircases, corridors, void decks etc, to monitor all kinds of nuisances than we can afford.
* Have more luxuriant and extensive landscape sites in our estates in spite of our tropical weather that renders our maintenance more onerous.
* Have fanciful lights which are expensive, difficult to maintain and consume high energy.
* Construct fountain or water features which can lead to high maintenance costs.
Well, the hard truth is, there is a price to everything. Certainly our wants are many, but our means are also limited. So it is often a choice between alternatives as we take a balanced approach, guided albeit by the timeless truth that there is always a trade off in everything. Sometimes, the trade-off is painful and unpopular. But hard decisions we have to make, for to do otherwise is to abdicate our responsibility to our residents.
Put it another way, it is alright to dream big, but as long as we keep our feet on the ground, with the Burj Dubai as poignant reminder of our excesses, our Town Council should do well in many more years to come.
