The way governments deal with money annoys me

As I was walking this morning, I happened to pass someone in a brand new city pickup truck.

Most of the city, state, and federal vehicles I see are like this; almost none are older than 3 or 4 years. Now, the city I live in is broke. Not desperately broke like some, but they are cutting fire protection, police protection, park and recreation operating hours and maintenance, and streets.

But still, there was this brand new truck!  Now I know that new vehicles have less maintenance and are more reliable than old ones. I, however, drive a 12 year old, well maintained car, and do just fine.  So do most of the people I know.  Only those with considerable resources have new cars, and even then often buy lightly used vehicles because it makes more economic sense.  The most recent information I remember said that the fleet average age for all cars in the US was now somewhat in excess of 8 years.

Why don't government employees drive cars that long or longer?  Maintenance should be less expensive with fleets and employee (or volume contract) workers and parts.  We all would save money.

This is only one symptom of how government (and sometimes other organizational) spending gets out of synch with what we do in our private lives.  It annoys me.