On 12Aug2020 0825, xxxxxx@gmail.com wrote:

> Dad was a small engine mechanic at points in his life. He took a job  > at a local Medium Security Prison. The prison had a lockup with >
probably 30 sets of tools. Due to safety concerns, they could only >
EVER bring out one set of tools and all tools had to be accounted >
before anyone went back to the cell blocks after class. Every year, >
more tools were purchased. Dad asked 'If you don't need them, what's >
the purpose in ordering more tools than you will use in a hundred >
years?'. The answer was that the way purchasing worked, you got > budget
X. If you didn't need X one year, they dropped your allocation > for
subsequent years. So to have the money when you do need to buy >
something, you had to constantly spend your full allotment because >
getting your allotment cut then trying to convince someone to up it >
again when needed was a real problem.
That's a common thing with annual budgets. When I was a kid, every few
years the local country council would re-grade and re-seal the bottom
half-mile of all the little rural side-roads whether they needed it or
not. Meanwhile, further up those roads there'd be miles of unsealed road
full of potholes and in dire need of a rebuild and sealing, but that was
never done.

The reason for this was simple: rebuilding and sealing miles of country
road was an expensive and time-consuming affair and they could never get
funding for it. Resealing 1/4- or 1/2-mile stretches of road was quick
and cheap, so they do that every time they had a small budget surplus at
the end of the year, doing it to as many roads as they had spare money for.

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>