[rwest]

I retired at the end of May this year, but before I left, the 10 year capital improvement budget requests where due. I did a very thorough job, I met with all the different departments to see what kind of facility improvements they wanted as well as entering in structural and mechanical items for each building. I updated all the existing entries and even advised the new finance staff on people’s names in the system that should be removed because many hadn’t worked there in many years and one had even died a few years back.

Then... I added an additional request. $500,000 for “public art”. In the software there are several boxes to put in explanations and budget impact information. For the description, I put down that it was for a large bronze statue of me on the grounds. In the next section I explained that it would likely become a tourist destination with people flying in from Sweden and Japan bringing in millions or dollars in revenue to the region as well as hosting festivals etc.

I figured that when they did a first look at the requests, someone would see it right away, have a good laugh and delete it...yeah, not so much, I had to stop into work a couple months later to get some HR help and ran into the Deputy City Manager and the City Manager. So I casually asked how the budget went- “That wasn’t funny” said the Deputy. The City Manager said she thought it was pretty funny, but it ended up going pretty far up the process before it was caught!

I had joked with a few co-workers before I left that with the way things had been going, I would probably get a call from an artist this summer needing me to do a sitting...