Perhaps it's not the politicians, but the people wanting services like:
Dept. of landlord/tenant affairs to resolve those disputes outside of courts.
Consumer protection agency.
Fire/rescue services that requires a 24/7 staff with 4-year degrees and $600,000 fire trucks. (Saw an article on the newer and harder materials in current cars that better protect occupants but extrication equipment four years old literally won't cut it anymore. Replacement stronger cutting tools are $25K. Each.)
Child and adult protective services.
Building/fire/code inspectors.
Parks, and the people to maintain them.
It costs $10K to equip one police officer, plus the car and maintenance on it. Replace all that stuff every five years at least. Initial training is $100K each, minimum, plus at least 2 - 3 weeks additional training every year. Almost half leave within 10 years.
And on and on....
Look in your phone book at the local govt. departments/agencies. Which ones would you cut?
Any cut is going to create howls from somebody.
One person's wasteful spending is someone else's essential service.
I have absolutely NO problem with the things you listed! What I call wasteful spending, is crapola that our tax dollars should
NOT be wasted on.
Just a couple of examples here in our municipality:
Last year one city council member treated approx. 50 part-time, HS age, summer help to a steak dinner at the most expensive restaurant in town....on my tax dollars! That's WASTE! Historically in the past, individual dept heads told there summer workers to plan a small potluck...each person bringing a dish to pass....and the dept head provided whatever meat (luncheon meat to steak) that that dept head wanted to.
This city has sent, and paid for, one of their most inept supervisors, to attend a university in North Carolina to take a course that that supervisor wanted (NOT needed) to take....that was
completely unrelated to his job. Cost $12,000. Yet they refuse to pay for even the cost of gas or meals, for other employees to go for
job related technical training that is provided for
FREE by various manufacturers and educational facilities.
This city spent over $2M on renovations to a 100+ year old multi-story, handicap
in-accessible building....including installing an elevator.....while not increasing the much needed office space They actually reduced office space! They were offered a larger, single-level commercial office building, one block away from their present location, by a utility company that had moved their offices. That building is on 1 entire square block of downtown real estate.....half of which is a paved parking lot. The cost to the city for that facility......less than $200K.
Oh, and the city hall parking lot.....they needed more room at their current location...so after remodeling (instead of saving $1.8M by relocating to a newer handicap accessible office building 1 block away) they purchased a condemned store front next door (loaded with asbestos) for $400K PLUS they threw in a building site in the city's industrial park (another $150K), PLUS they had paid the owner of the storefront 2 years worth of rent for using his building while city hall was being remodeled (another $96K). They wasted over $2.4M by not moving. The taxpayers, needless to say, were p*ssed about it, and removed most of the council at the next election.....but the tax dollars were already flushed away.
The city fathers have the idea that anytime a building is torn down, the city should buy it, pave it, and turn it into a parking lot. We have more parking lots that a much bigger town could possibly need!
There is a
LOT of tax money
WASTED in this city! I was employed by the city for 30+ years, so I know what
necessities we had to do without, so the hierarchy could fund their feather their nests.
If it happens like that here in little ol' Podunk City, one can only imagine how much greater the waste is in larger cities, or at the county and state level! Oh, wait....you don't have to imagine! You can read it in the headlines of the big city newspapers, and hear it on the news!