One day after claiming that the city couldn’t find $80,000 to fund BikeShare, Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker has suddenly found religion and is urging the city to spend over $17 million buying land in Scarborough. I now understand the problem with the BikeShare funding: the amount required simply wasn’t large enough. I mean, why dole out a few thousand dollars here and there when you can just blow it all on one big purchase? Makes perfect sense. Cuts down on administrative costs. You’ve got to spend money to save money.
Yes, I know that the land purchase and ongoing BikeShare funding are two completely different kinds of expenditures and it’s unfair to compare them. In fact, I think that the proposed Scarborough purchase would be a worthy expenditure and I support it. But the juxtaposition of the same councillor insisting that we’re too broke to afford an $80,000 program one day, and wanting to spend $17 million the next was just too juicy to ignore.