Today's award goes to the government of Miami-Dade County in Florida. Autoblog reports:
Have you ever bought a brand new cars only to forget where you put it? How about 300 of them? Probably not – unless you're Miami-Dade County, which was recently reunited with 298 vehicles it bought brand new between 2006 and 2007.
The county "discovered" this fleet of no-mileage vehicles after reading about them in a Spanish-language newspaper there (see the source for more images). Most of the misplaced motorcade is made up of Toyota Prius hybrids whose warranties either expired with very few miles on the odo or will very soon.
. . .
We're not sure what that much time in Miami heat and humidity does to an unused hybrid powertrain, but it can't be good.
There's more at the link.
Even for a bureaucrat, simply forgetting 300 brand-new cars in a parking garage is a bit much! Looking at the pictures of the vehicles at the linked post, they must have cost at least $20,000 apiece on average, even allowing for bulk purchasing discounts. That means something like six million dollars of taxpayers' money was tied up in these unused, rusting assets! If I were a Miami-Dade County taxpayer, I'd be furious - but what's the bet that no-one will ever be held accountable?
Bureaucrats! Grrr!
Peter
You know, I've been seeing story pop up on all of the blogs I read daily. I have no skin in the game -- I've never even been to Florida. But it really gets my goat when people get all righteously angry about a story when the facts of the story have plainly been misreported.
ReplyDeleteI can't really do better than this commenter at BoingBoing:
http://boingboing.net/2012/04/26/miami-dade-county-bought-300-t.html#comment-511909342