In my October 29 piece, “Say It Ain’t So, ACHD!” I accurately reported what took place at an October 21 meeting of the Valley Regional Transit’s Performance and Planning Committee meeting where I was flabbergasted to hear that ACHD was supposedly requiring a $400 per bus bench review for A.D.A. compliance. In that meeting, I asked repeatedly whether the $400 per bench expenditure was really being required by ACHD and was assured that it was.
My blog post was not intended to be an in-depth investigative report. It was intended to shine light on the situation publicly, quickly, in an effort to prevent this kind of wasteful spending.
Today, eighteen days after my original blog post, I received a hand-delivered three-page response from ACHD, with multiple attachments, which appears to be their way of trying to say it ain’t so:
Click here to see ACHD’s response.
The bottom line is that spending $400 per bench for a review is a horrendous waste of taxpayer dollars. In these difficult economic times, none of us can afford this type of wasteful government spending. Let’s hope VRT and ACHD staff members get their heads back together to figure out a more taxpayer-friendly, common sense solution.