My wife and I live an average distance away from a town called Bay City, MI. There are a few things that make Bay City a sort of well known place. Besides the fact that it is where Madonna lived as a child for a short time, it is also an international port given its proximity to Lake Huron as it sits right at the mouth of the Saginaw River.
It's actually the Saginaw River that gives me some of the inspiration for this post. It effectively splits the town of Bay City into two separate sections. What used to be two distinct towns called Bay City, and Wenona are now all considered Bay City. Of course, when you have a river, there is always the need to get over that river and Bay City is no exception boasting an incredible four bascule bridges.
On a side note, the bridges in these photos are not in Bay City, they are in Grand Rapids, MI, but it turns out I don't have any photos of the bridges in Bay City, so this is the best I can do.
Anyway, so they sold two of the bridges to this company called Bay City Bridge Partners or something like that. If you ever wanted to see just how petty a group of people can be, start charging them for something that used to be free. My brother in law works in a building that has a view of one of the two bridges that are now toll bridges and he said he sees maybe one or two cars an hour go over the thing.
It doesn't help that when the tolls were first implemented the company had all kinds of issues with the system. People were getting hundreds if not thousands of dollars in bills in the mail due to erroneous readings of their crossings over the bridge. Needless to say, things have only gotten worse. One of the state owned bridges is currently demolished as they are rebuilding it and as you can imagine that is going to take a decent amount of time to complete. That leaves the two toll bridges and the single state owned bridge left.
As you can imagine, the non-toll bridge has seen a massive uptick in traffic over the past couple of months. On top of that, the private company decided they were going to raise prices and no longer offer an unlimited pass for a flat monthly fee to residents.
Needless to say, the residents are not amused. Protests have ensued, civil unrest is reaching a peak, and the city is even contemplating what they might need to do to take back possession of the two bridges. Which leads me back to the title of this post. The intention was to sell the bridges to someone who could afford to handle the repairs on them (best intentions). Unfortunately, here we are now with costs to residents going up, the non-toll bridges getting congested and by default more worn from additional use, and basic displeasure from how this is all playing out (worst outcomes).
You might remember a short time ago I had a project at work where we were having new copiers installed in our buildings. Along with the copiers, we implemented a new (to us) software suite called Papercut which allows us to manage the copiers a little more easily. With the software we can push out printers remotely to specific users. We can also implement secure printing which requires users to input a code on the copier before they can access their sent print jobs or make copies.
It also allows us to track how much is being printed and copied by each user. While I do think we print way too much where I work, it isn't my intent to be a watch dog. I have more important things to do. This switch really was done with the best of intentions. Security is paramount these days and the secure printing aspect alone makes it worth it.
Of course, we have had our fair share of snags along the way. Due to a firmware mismatch, the devices aren't working as expected and obviously civil unrest has ensued. I have people "talking shit" about the devices to their colleagues. Likewise they have expressed their displeasure to me in various forms. I'm pretty sure I am about a week away from a union grievance being filed against me. Even though it wasn't my decision alone to do this. Which leads us back to worst outcomes.
It's hard not to take stuff like this personally. It's also hard not to second guess your decisions when things don't go as smoothly as you had hoped. This is a perfect example of why "Decision Paralysis" happens. I'd like to think this is why I make the big bucks, but in the public sector, that couldn't be further from the truth.
Fingers crossed this all gets worked out sooner rather than later!
Do you have any best intentions but worst outcomes stories? How did you handle it?
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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or