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Before you go ranting on about the money your city spent, where did the money come from to paint the bridge and then light it up? My point is sometimes money for our cities comes from federal grants or is otherwise generated by local or state laws and must be used for a specific purpose. In this case I would guess the money is federal money and the city only gets the money if they use it to "maintain, repair, or improve" bridges. (Didn't Obama sign something like that - the Federal bridge repair act or some such nonsense?) Your city might not have money to fix the potholes on the road leading to the bridge, but the money came from the federal government and must be used for that bridge.
My little town too has been having problems. We were the fastest growing city in the United States due to a boom in construction in the town - we turned a small sleepy town of 10k into a huge town of 80k in five years. Housing values soared and the county was building new schools to handle the growth, while the city was getting extra taxes from the increased local tax base and perks from builders (Build 1k of houses and you have to build us a new fire station). Now that the boom we have discovered we have over built - and we can no long afford to keep all of these fire stations open. We have also cut our police department in half too.
However, our city government has been pretty good. We have a local forum on FB where we can ask questions about our city government and get a response from the city council quickly and without all of the double speak. This is where I learned that some money is legally set aside for a specific purpose.
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