I’m writing this on my 2017, i7 quad core iMac with a 27 inch screen.
I dropped over $3000 on this machine. It was not cheap.
A lot of people told me that I could get a comparable Windows machine for half that price.
But a couple things. First, Windows? Ew. I got into a discussion with someone who professed to be a designer who also used a Windows machine. “Sir,” I said to him. “If you say you are a designer, and you use a Windows machine, you obviously don’t understand what the word design means.”
Design is not merely what something looks like. Instead, good design is about … well, Dieter Rams had ten principles of good design:
- Good design is innovative
- Good design makes a product useful
- Good design is aesthetic
- Good design makes a product understandable
- Good design is unobtrusive
- Good design is honest
- Good design is long-lasting
- Good design is thorough down to the last detail
- Good design is environmentally-friendly
- Good design is as little design as possible
Yes, design is aesthetic (principle three), but it is also useful, understandable, unobtrusive and long-lasting.
That latter is a key point. Yes, I don’t doubt many of you have eight year old Windows computers. But how many of you are running two businesses off those computers? How many of you are doing design work and photography and even video editing with those eight year old computers?
More likely, those people who invested in Windows machines for their businesses eight years ago picked up a new Windows machine two years later. And then another new machine two years after that.
If our (admittedly theoretical) computer buyer is holding to the above pattern, they are about to invest another $1500 into a production level machine.
Over the course of that eight years, our straw man has spent $6000 saving money by not buying that $3000 machine.
I was reminded of this while listening to the discussion about the need for a new fire hall building.
The potential cost of such a building? Is just under $12-million (and if history is any judge, expect that cost to go up during construction).
Some councillors expressed concern that this was too much building. One said that having space for wildfire fighters to stay when there’s only been two evacuations in the last twenty years was planning for something that we might only need a few times over the lifespan of the building.
But isn’t that the hope for the fire department in general? We pray it only gets used a few times. The less it gets used, the better.
But if there were no fires in 2025, would we suddenly close down the fire station? No. It’s there because we are planning for emergencies. If no emergencies happen? So much the better. It doesn’t mean that the firefighters don’t have to be there. Don’t have to train. You want a fire department in tip top shape, who never get called out.
When I was growing up, the fire truck in my home town sat unused for years before there was an actual fire.
The volunteer fire fighters all went down to the station, got in their gear, then spent the better part of an hour trying to get the fire truck to run, as it hadn’t been maintained properly. The battery was dead.
If the town were to build a fire hall looking at the needs now, or even the next five years? That would be terribly short sited.
Back when the current station was built, it wasn’t built with the understanding that if a fire fighter is exposed to hazardous chemicals, they should be able to shower off at the station and not have to go home to clean up.
If all the town does is built a new fire station designed to last 15 or 20 years, that will leave the town in the same situation it finds itself in right now, but two decades down the road when construction costs are nearly guaranteed to be higher, when building codes are going to be stricter and the cost to the town will be a lot more than it is now. Spending up front for something that will last is actually worthwhile.
You don’t want to cheap out and then have to spend even more money to correct for those mistakes ten, twenty years down the road. That’s not sound fiscal policy. That’s short term thinking. It’s like all those hotels that put in 30 pin dock connectors on their alarm clocks right before the 30 pin dock connector was discontinued.
Right now, there aren’t a lot of grants available for this type of project, but a few years ago, the District of Mackenzie was able to fund their new fire hall to the tune of 95 percent being covered by grants.
If the town had started work back then, there’s a chance that we could have arranged for similar funding. It’s not like the need wasn’t there five years ago. It’s just getting more desperate now. Next year? It will be even more desperate.
There’s an old saying that I’m not going to look up, that goes something like this: the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is today. The more we delay, the less lead time we will have and the more expensive the building will (probably) become. Maybe there’s still time to set it aside as a shovel ready project and spend a year trying to track down grants.
But don’t let it sit too long. Because unlike computers, the architectural design on a fire station? Aren’t going to depreciate over the next few years.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
