Would you spend $50,000 for air conditioning and staging that will be used for just 75 minutes? Ostensibly, the U.S. State Department thought it was reasonable to spend this amount of money for a little more than an hour.
Here’s a little bit of the background: in the early part of April, President Obama visited Jamaica to hold a town hall meeting as part of the “Young Leaders of the Americas” at the University of West Indies. He made a speech and took questions that lasted for 75 minutes.
The event, which took place at the Assembly Hall building on the Mona campus of the university, prompted the State Department to send out four contracts totaling just under $50,000. Why this amount of money? Well, U.S. officials wanted to spend that money for “staging” and air conditioning.
According to the Weekly Standard, the “staging” contract was $39,935 in addition to a follow-up change order of $3,675. The details of the work involved were not listed and the benefactor of the contract is just written as Miscellaneous Foreign Awardees. For $50,000, you’d think it would be an elaborate setup, but it was not.
The news website wrote of the event: “Photos of the event appear to show a low stage with several rows of seating on risers for selected representatives of the Young Leaders of the Americas and a row of flags from the nations represented at the meeting. Behind the stage, a high white wall was emblazoned with an official seal and draped with red, blue and gold bunting.”
The air conditioning and generators installation, meanwhile, had two contracts worth $1,264 and $4,060, respectively. The temperate of the day was in the low-80s, which certainly isn’t too bad. What’s wrong with a $10 fan?
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