Q: Mr. Federal Way, it seems like all the roads in Federal Way are under construction right now. It’s dumb, because traffic’s already bad. Are they even accomplishing anything?
A: Mr. Federal Way actually has a theory on the never ending road work in most cities, and by “theory” he means “obvious, undeniable fact.”
You see, somewhere in the bowels of any city is a department responsible for maintaining the roads – let’s call it the Department of Irritating Mr. Federal Way To No End. That department, like all municipal departments, has a budget, and that budget, like all budgets, is based on the needs of the department. So the department figures out how it’s going to get city roads into working order, it asks for money, it gets some of it, and it does its thing. Repeat this for a few years and, eventually, all the roads are pristine and everyone in the department gets raises or awards or medals or whatever it is that city department heads get for not utterly screwing things up.
So now we’ve got good roads, we all get around, and no sewage mains are cracking and spewing yuck up onto South 320th Street, right? Right. So the DoIMFWTNE’s job is done, right? Right. So they can just stop making budget requests, right?
Hah. Silly idealist.
No govenermental agency in the history of governmental agencies has ever – EVER – said, “No, that’s cool. We don’t need that much money this year. In fact, go ahead and cut our budget to the bone and get rid of us. We’re pretty done here.” And honestly, if they did do that, despite it probably being the right thing to do, then the department head is probably not clever enough to be trusted with a department.
No, the clever department head – and whoever is in charge of the DoIMFWTNE is obviously very clever – instead says, “Yeah, while our job may LOOK like it’s finished, it’s actually just begun. So we need a lot of money. Like, all of it. At least a lot more than you gave us last time around.” And if any objective measure would show that the job is actually finished, the only clever thing to do is to undo all the finished work, double the cost estimate, and do it again.
And that, gentle reader, is why road work will never be done, and it’s why a perfectly good road will be torn up, worked on for three weeks while nearby traffic is reduced to a glacial crawl, and then look exactly like it did three weeks before.
Q: Mr. Federal Way, coffee or tea?
A: None of your business.
Got something for Mr. Federal Way? Email your questions, complaints and hate mail to mrfederalway@federalwaymirror.com.
