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Monday, December 21, 2009
Hillsborough County's "spray plane" gives local government yet another black eye
Posted by Kelly Cornelius on Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 12:45 PM
According to this article in the Trib today, Hillsborough County spent $700,000 on a mosquito spray plane (disguised as a very nice passenger plane), but the problem is the plane couldn't actually spray for mosquitoes. Why? Because it was a passenger plane! No worries, they wanted to retrofit it all along to be able to spray (uh-huh). The plane pictured in that article seems better-suited to carry dive gear and flip-flops to some warm destination somewhere. I challenge officials to find any government in the country using this make and model of an airplane as a "spray plane."
One check of the county's website shows information about our mosquito control helicopter which seems to actually work as a spraying helicopter — with no mention of da plane, boss, da plane.
Evidently this "spray plane" has been sitting around costing you money all this time (6 years). These figures from the article show the cost just over the past two years alone:
During the past two fiscal years, the plane flew 18 times, with fuel costs totaling $3,858 and maintenance $152,841.
Also disturbing is that embattled County Administrator Pat Bean approved the project and Bob Gordon of Public Works who I have had serious doubts about in the past regarding the Lithia Pinecrest crap is also involved in this. Also named is Paul Vanderploog, then the head of Public Works, now the head of the water department. You pay all of these employees a fortune, by the way. The most damning quote in the article is from Dennis Boone, a county mosquito pilot:
"The probability of anybody wanting to use a King Air for mosquito spraying is one in a million," Boone said. "Anybody who wants a spray plane gets a spray plane; they don't care about hauling anybody inside of it."
Boone also noted earlier in the article that he had lined up two planes that were actually real spray planes for the county to purchase and the county passed on both of those in favor of this passenger plane. That makes me wonder if it was purchased to really spray at all or could this be for days when even Ms. Bean's driver, Jarvis, doesn't want the hassle of all that traffic and parking and so maybe they jet her around instead?
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