I am breaking away from my norm of personal essays and while I expect those whose eyes normally glaze over when they balance their checkbooks (like mine do) to react to the title in similar fashion all I ask is a little forbearance. I promise this won’t be a printed equivalent to a dentist visit.
Monday night, March 25th saw the sunsetting of the Alhambra Creek Beavers Subcommittee whose collective efforts resulted in the compilation of a 57 page report now available in its entirety on-line at www.martinezbeavers.com. On Tuesday March 26th I received a phone call from a KPIX reporter who was in town to get up to date information on the beavers. That news segment is also available on-line.
My purpose for this post is to draw particular attention to one specific concern raised both in the report and again during the newscast. Numbers are out specifying what it has cost the City of Martinez to maintain our beaver colony in its current habitat. While it could be speculated that these figures appear somewhat inflated, I’m asking that we assume for the moment that they are not.
What the figure of $70,000+/- represents is termed a “sunk cost” or a cost that has been incurred which cannot be recovered to any significant degree. The argument made both in session and again in an interview provided to KPIX is that the cost to the City of Martinez doesn’t warrant a decision to maintain the beavers in their current habitat, yet microeconomics would point to variable costs being the true determinate factor for decision making.
Yes I feel eyes glazing so let me simplify – back in November the citizens of Martinez stood up and demanded the City Council study options that would allow the beavers to remain in their current habitat. Prudence dictated immediate steps be taken to ensure downtown merchants were protected from the possibility of flooding in the interim. The monies spent to date to accomplish both the will of the people and the protection of life and property are sunk costs.
Variable costs are sprinkled throughout the remainder of the report and reflect items such as bank stabilization, flood plain widening, creek walks, etc. These are real and probable costs and should be considered, yet what is and continues to be overlooked is the fact that a non-profit now exists to provide a conduit for necessary funding. The argument that the City of Martinez, ala its citizens, will continue to absorb these costs is misleading and to draw from yet another economic term is geared to create a sense of loss aversion.
What having a non-profit means is the ability to apply for and receive private and public funds, not unlike the New York example where a lone male beaver made the Bronx river his home. That one beaver netted the city $15,000,000 dollars in federal funding. I don’t profess to be much of an economist but to these lay persons eyes that would be one hell of an ROI (return on investment for my numbered addled friends.)
