Planning is the answer

‘Thinking Ahead’ writes:- ANY reasonably right-minded person will realise quite early in their lives that there are such things as seasons. That’s just the way the world works. In Vryheid, we have coolish dry winters and hot wet summers. That’s the way things work in this part of the world, it’s the way things have been as far as we know for thousands of years so we should have got used to the idea by now, surely.
It means that, for instance, farmers can follow a predictable weather pattern for the sowing and reaping of a crop, and clothing stores can forecast when they should buy in extra jerseys to meet customers’ demands. It also means that if you are, say, a municipal engineer, you can predict that with the rains will come more potholes on the roads, and if you are, say, a decision maker in the municipality’s community services department, you can safely predict that come the summer, the vegetation is going to grow wild if not managed. You know there are going to be potholes, and you know there are going to be grasses and weeds and wattle tree seedlings growing in the town’s cemeteries. You know it, it happens every year, it’s a seasonal phenomenon, it’s predictable, it can be planned for.
And yet, the town is riddled with potholes and the cemeteries are overgrown with weeds. Obviously no anticipatory planning was made. The pathetic attempts to fill potholes with ordinary soil prove that the municipality has not made contingency plans to have a supply of tar and stone on hand. Did community services hire extra labour, supply extra mowers, weed-eaters and/or brush cutters and ensure that fuel was available to cope with the weeds? Obviously not. Management is not simply “putting out fires”, it’s also planning – anyone in the private sector will tell you that. When will the municipality understand that too and manage our town accordingly?