Another Friday lunch, and even more lights are on

When Wichita city leaders tell us that the budget and spending have been cut to the bone, that everything that can be done to save money has already been done, remember my Friday trips to downtown for lunch.

Last Friday at lunchtime two of the four sidewalk bench lights were illuminating the midday sidewalk. Yesterday three of four were turned on. You can also see that the street lights for two city blocks were also switched on, and one photograph shows that lights on the top floor of the city-owned parking garage were also turned on.

Driving through downtown, there were many other blocks on which the street lights were switched on in the middle of a day. Well, it was cloudy.

The lights illustrated in this photograph are, undoubtedly, a small portion of the city’s spending. But you don’t have to look very hard to find waste like this, and we know that small examples of waste are multiplied many times. So when city leaders tell us that there is nowhere left to cut in the budget, that everything that can be done to trim the fat has already been done, and that the only thing we can do is raise taxes — well, think of this photograph and others illustrated in To compensate, Wichita switched on the street lights, In Wichita, the streetside seating is illuminated very well, In Wichita, the rooftops are well-lit and On a sunny day in downtown Wichita you can see the street lights.

This is not to say that waste like this does not occur in the private sector. Of course it does. But businesses and individuals have a powerful incentive to avoid waste that isn’t present in government: Businesses and people are spending their own money. And even if they waste money, it’s their money, not ours.