Expenditures are unreasonable
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Richard Berman
Charlottesville
Published: April 4, 2008
According to TV news, the City of Charlottesville is spending $500,000 on a green roof for City Hall.
While that may be commendable from an environmental point of view, it leaves something to be desired from a taxpayer’s point of view.
If they can save $1,000 a month on heating and cooling, that will take a little over 40 years to amortize the expense and that is without counting the cost of maintenance of that green roof over 40 years.
That does not seem to be a reasonable use of taxpayer’s money, any more than spending $1,000,000 over four years for signage for the Downtown Mall.
Especially considering the fact that there is not enough parking available to warrant trying to bring more people to the Downtown Mall.
It might make more sense to forget the green roof and the signage and lower the tax rate instead.
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Posted by ( polaris01 ) on April 09, 2008 at 6:43 pm
The City was going to replace the roof anyhow because it had reached the end of its useful life. The cost of the green layer represents a 20% premium (about $80K) over what the roof would have cost. The payback is far more realistic when you dial in that information. In other years the roof would have cost more, but the current owner friendly bidding climate enabled the City to get a very competetive price on this and other roofs. You won’t hear that on the local news.
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