When I was in high school, I used to sometimes take a shortcut through a corn field to get home after school which included a trek through a swampy area. What a few ingenious senior students from my school decided to do was install a bridge to help get through it. While not perfect, it was a way to help students, students tired of waiting of waiting to see if something might be done with the abandoned corn field, drastically cut their commutes.

It was the news of Adi Astl’s homemade staircase in Tom Riley Park that brought me back to these high school memories. To solve the issue of people getting hurt trying to make their way down a steep hill in the park, he asked the city to build a staircase, for the oh so affordable price of $65,000 to $150,000. Outraged by the cost, he took it upon himself to build an eight-step staircase for only $550. Even with concerns of it not being up to regulation standards, quotes from private firms put the costs around $5,000 to $10,000 instead.

Toronto is not the only city facing a big spending controversy. In 2015, the plan for the Calgary Transit Green Line LRT was put forward, only to be scaled down to half of its original route coverage now in 2017. In addition to the line going from 46-km to a mere 20-km, it’ll also cost more than what was originally proposed. While several years old, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business put out a report analysing municipal spending trends for Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. With provincial and federal funds supporting large city infrastructure projects, this is an issue that everyone, even those living in rural ridings, should be concerned about. This issue expends beyond infrastructure, as overspending on projects such as these impact a city’s ability to allocate funds to other aspects of a budget, such hospitals, social programs, public transit service, and even other construction projects, especially when you’re under pressure to build a new subway line by 2013…cough cough….

While not a building marvel, the staircase did bring much awareness to the issue of reckless spending by the city of Toronto. More than just some pieces of wood fashioned into a set of eight steps, this staircase is a call for scrutiny of how city infrastructure dollars are being spent. It is easy for the common Joe to freak out over a $150,000 staircase, but how would he be able to wrap his head around a multi-billion-dollar subway? Not to mention the colossal number of smaller projects going under the radar, just like this staircase would have if not for Astl’s initiative.

This rubber duck may not be an infrastructure project itself, but it has become an unofficial mascot of overspending by governments in Ontario.

On Friday, John Tory did take note of the message Astl’s staircase sent across, stating his intention to build a safe, durable, and cost-effective staircase within the next few days. It is likely that city bureaucrats may have settled on a price between $65,000 to $15,000 is it wasn’t for Astl’s staircase. At the end of the day, we need infrastructure spending, especially in cities like Toronto. However, we need to hold our governments to account to ensure the costs, and even the projects themselves, are justified. Because of Astl’s staircase, I can imagine that myself and many others walking by construction projects in Toronto will be more conscious of the large sums of money flowing into these projects, and hopefully city bureaucrats will be more aware of that fact also.

Do you feel your city is overspending on infrastructure projects also? If so, share in the comments below!

Disclaimer: Story of a Tory is in no way affiliated with the Conservative Party of Canada or any other political party, be it federal or provincial. The views of each author are independent of all other authors.