How "historic"?

There is a funny article about the upcoming "historic" selectmen decision about the multi-million dollar waste water treatment plant. This word "historic" belies an over-inflated self image of the selectmen. They are somehow determining the destiny of Exeter, and only they, the all-knowing selectmen, have the intelligence and prescience to make such a decision.

It is important to realize that they are not experts in the water services industry. Neither is the politically appointed Water/Sewer Advisory Committee.  Neither are they entrepreneurs, and so they make poor predictions about whether people will be satisfied. None of them can direct scarce goods to satisfy the most urgently desired demands. There is no price system, which requires private property and consumer feedback. 

Moreover, The idea of "saving money" is a null point. Consumers spend as much or as little money as they must in order to acquire the goods and services that they want. They do so freely, of their own will. For Exeter's waste water, "saving money" is just an artifice to make it sound like these people are being responsible and making judicious choices. They cannot be judicious because they are using money that was expropriated from people. (Incidentally, even the ostensibly private engineering firm Write Pierce does not change this argument. And Wright Pierce is just capitalizing from a crony deal with the Exeter government.)

Exeter bureaucrats are just playing business with other people's money. If their "historic" decision fails, no sweat. Maybe they don't get re-elected, though blame for political blunders is usually spread evenly so as to preclude a single person being held responsible.

Real entrepreneurs make "historic" decisions every day, and they do so with their own resources or resources voluntarily entrusted to them. The burden of failure lies with them. And they don't go on and on about how historically relevant they are.