City Signs: Have A Nice Pay: CRERAR

Solar-powered roadside displays showing a driver’s speed of travel have been appearing throughout the city for a number of years. However, they don’t all operate consistently.

Some flash red digits once drivers exceed the speed limit. The numeric information presented is helpful as a tool to help make our roads safer. But I am baffled by the green smiley faces and red frowns that also appear on these tableaux. What value do these visuals provide and what do they cost the city?

Many years ago, I heard about a scam by a creative bank employee. It was in the early days of daily interest chequing accounts, when interest rates were significantly higher than they are today.

If an account was earning, on average, $.010002 cents per day, the employee ensured that one cent ($.01) was added to the customer’s account while funneling the remaining $.000002 into a secret account. You might be surprised to learn that this small amount extracted daily from hundreds, maybe thousands, of accounts added up to $1 million over time.

While the concept was inventive, planning, execution, and monitoring were handled poorly, so the secret account began to draw a lot of attention and the clever employee was caught. However, the lesson to be learned from this little yarn, aside from the fact that crime doesn’t pay, is that small numbers can grow to become large numbers very quickly.

Returning to the city’s smiley solar-powered speed indicators, what is the total cost to taxpayers notwithstanding they operate on free solar energy?

The amount is easy to calculate. Subtract the cost of a display with numeric readouts only from the cost of a display containing both numbers plus the faces, then multiply that amount by the total number of displays containing these animations (those that already exist as well as those that are planned).

The difference for one roadside display is minimal. However, when the cost for all the displays that have superfluous features (plus unnecessary signs) is totaled, the amount is likely significant. Add to this total all other examples in which the city spends money on something showy but unnecessary except to a select group of people.

Identifying and halting the inclusion of theatrics and worthless signs in other ongoing projects would likely save Ottawa taxpayers millions of dollars. At the very least, it would allow city hall to spend money collected via property taxes on more important activities.

Every little penny, or more, counts.

Howard Crerar is a project manager and has worked in the software industry for three decades.

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