Man builds stairs for 0.0084615 the cost of the LOWEST bid out of his OWN POCKET, city says no! by Jim Stone
Jim Stone
A park in Toronto needed 8 steps built down an embankment. The lowest bid the city accepted was $65, 000 CAD, with the highest being $150, 000 CAD. Someone in the neighborhood got upset by the rip off, and built what looks like perfectly good stairs for $550. The city wants them torn out, because someone did not get their kick back!
In my opinion, the stairs could have been better for $550 because for that price they could have been concrete. But the neighborhood still clearly proved that the city is basically robbing the people by drastically overpricing projects. In this case, they clearly inflated the cost by 99 times over, for the LOWEST bid!
I know a contractor in Canada. He wanted to get work from the city of Vancouver. So he filed all the paperwork, submitted it, and a little while later he got a call. The only thing they wanted to know, for him to qualify, is if he would give kickbacks to anyone in the city government who gave him work.
In other words, they did not ask for his skills or anything else, all they wanted to know is if they would get their cut of every deal. And he was laughing, because that was the real requirement for getting contracts with the city. And he was perfectly happy to do it, and said that even if he gave a big kickback, he could still beat the competition because their bids were so outrageous.
Anyway, evidently Toronto runs on the same system. I believe this system is in place everywhere, including even small town America. if you want to see why your taxes are so high, take a look at this Toronto news report. This pretty much says it all!
Jim Stone