Your high school guidance counselor should have told you to get into the bench making business. Palm Desert has announced that they are replacing all of their benches and trash cans on El Paseo with new ones – at a cost of $58,300. And thank God, as we can not afford to have our precious snowbirds parking their Bentley’s next to some janky, old regular looking bench.
The Desert Sun has the details:
The benches cost $600 each and include grooves designed to deter skateboarders from riding or launching off of them. The trash cans cost $1,150 each and include a color Palm Desert logo on the front and back.
Sure Desert Hot Springs can not afford to pay for cops, but life is different across the 10 in Palm Desert. So much so that over $1,100 for a trash can just seems right.
And city Management Analyst Deborah Schwartz went out of her way to make sure these benches were right for the city:
During the selection process, Schwartz even took a sample of the bench material, dumped all kinds of food and drink on it, and let it bake in the sun for two weeks before public works crews hosed it off to make sure it would pressure-wash well.
She also learned other things, such as “Hershey’s Kisses don’t melt in the sun. It’s kind of creepy.”
Reserving The Hershey’s Kisses controversy for another day, we have to ask: how filthy are our precious snowbirds? Have they just been tossing their drinks and Hershey’s Kisses out of their Jaguars and on to city benches all these years? And why is this the first time we are hearing about it?
The city also extended its free golf cart shuttle on El Paseo program for $90,000 for the year – probably as just another way to mock Desert Hot Springs.
(image via Craig Sunter / CC)
