I want to share some local politics fuckery with you guys.
This is the park where I live. Just before the start of the summer of 2016, a construction company came along and set up a construction fence around half the park for a restoration project. That part had the park playground in it, which was used almost daily by families with small kids. They didn’t actually start building until after summer, which leads to the question, why did they cut off access to the playground before summer, when people would have time to use it? Apparently it was because they wanted to show people that “things were happening”, whatever that meant.
Anyways, that’s not the important part here. That’s just a bonus. The important part is what has happened since then. The restoration of the park was part of a project with 5 parts to bring “culture” to the town. When it started they had a budget of 25 million Swedish kronor (~$2,789,323) however after a budgetary meeting they decided to bring it down to 10 million kr (~$1,115,729). The park was part 3 of the project, and was given a budget of 5 million kr (~$557,864).
It was supposed to be finished in November, but as you can see from these pictures I took today, it’s not done yet. Nor is anyone there working. And why is that? Well, the local paper recently revealed why.
Remember that 5 million kr budget, do you know how much money they spent? 6 million (~$669,437). And despite only being on part 3 of their five part project, they’ve spent 9.6 million kr (~$1,071,100) of their 10 million kr budget. Because of this complete disregard for the budget, the park has been standing like this for months. There’s never anyone there working or anything. What’s worse, it was revealed that the restoration of the park was started before they had even decided how the budget was going to be spent. For example, there was supposed to be a observation tower as part of the park. The politicians estimated that the tower would cost 500 000 kr (~$55,786), but now it’s revealed that the cost is closer to 3 million kr (~$334,718). They didn’t even bother to check the real cost before starting the project.
However, the politicians behind this project are still optimistic. They seem to have a complete misunderstanding regarding the term “budget”, but they still think the project will be complete. They are now aiming for April, and they think the total cost will land somewhere around 12 million kr (~$1,338,875). I have no idea where they plan on getting the last 2 million kr (~$223,145) from. Are they going to pay themselves? They seem to think that budget is a recommendation, it’s not, it’s a hard limit. Yet they talk about it like going over the budget with 20% and still leaving the project not even half finished is totally fine.
The opposition party does not share their optimism, they point out that by their estimations it’s going to land somewhere around 19 million (~$2,119,885). And if that’s the case, with the cost for the remaining parts of the project the total cost will land on that 25 million kr that the government decided was too much. The opposition also points out that this project was pointless to begin with. As I said at the beginning, the park was used almost daily, there was nothing wrong with it. The local school is in need of restoration, but no, lets spend a fuck load of money we don’t have to “restore” a park there was nothing wrong with.
The politicians behind this project should be forced to resign. Without question. They have shown a complete disregard for the taxpayers’ money. A complete disregard for the budget they have been given. And they have shown that they aren’t doing what is needed of them like using money to restore the school, rather they spend money we don’t have on pet projects to “bring culture”.
When the park is complete, no matter how much they’ve gone over budget, they will parade around and go “Look what we have done. Look how pretty we made the park. Aren’t we good politicians.” They shouldn’t be allowed to do this. This project is not a success. It is an utter failure, and the politicians behind it should be punished for it.











