Paulette de’Pascal, the taxpayer funded City Council Candidate in Albuquerque District 4, has raised more than a couple of eyebrows with her purchase of a $2,990.26 computer from the Apple Store at ABQ Uptown.
Now, I’m not one to question anyone’s decision to buy an Apple computer. After all, I’m in advertising, you know, the industry that LOVES Apple. In fact, most of the computers in our shop are Apples. I’ve bought several in the last couple of years, which is why I’m kind of sitting here and scratching my head.
You see, $2990.26 is an awful lot of computer. Sure, Apple computers sell for a premium over most PC’s, but $2990.26? You can get an iMac for as little $999, or even a MacBook laptop for as little as $1099 (what I’ve been using for the last three years). As someone who has run a campaign, I can tell you that would have all of the computing power Ms. de’Pascal could possibly need.
Instead, it looks like Ms. de’Pascal opted to use just shy of 10% of her taxpayer funded campaign resources to buy something like a MacBook Pro at $2,799+tax.
So, how does Ms. de’Pascal propose to fix this serious error in judgement? By returning the extravagant taxpayer funded purchase and buying something a little more sensible? Hmm… no. There is no way she is going to part with that really cool computer. Nope, her solution is to insult our intelligence by pretending to do the right thing by turning the outright purchase of this extravagant machine into a lease.
Ms. de’Pascal would like us all to forget this whole thing, and focus on the issues. The thing is, with all of the hoopla going on in Rio Rancho regarding inappropriate spending, it seems that this is the issue.
UPDATE: I stand corrected. Thanks, Billy. It looks like Ms. de’Pascal bought “ bought 2 computers and 2 printers for [her] campaign.” So, I guess she needed double the computing power. But , the inappropriate spending theme still rings true. If you were running a business campaign for six months (roughly the amount of time she has to spend taxpayer money on this thing) would you put NEARLY 10% of your resources into a capital investment? Probably, only if you were using SOMEONE ELSE’S money. Not the type of person I would want making budget decisions down at City Hall.