Lets talk about advertising in the Crowsnest Pass

Since my first day on council I have always argued that municipal services, should be tendered out to get the best possible deal for the taxpayers.
A good example of that is the debate we recently had about the engineering on the Sentinel Bridge. For more than seven years we have used the same firm without going to bids to see if we could get a better deal.
Anyway back to advertising, if you go almost any where else other than the Crowsnest Pass you will find that most towns, cities and municipalities put out there advertising for tender to receive the best possible deal.
I have argued ever year since 2004 that we should do that, for some strange reason the majority of council disagreed with that position until a couple of years ago.
Arguments were made that not everybody reads the same paper, which I suspect is the case everywhere.
The argument was made that I had a bias against one of the papers, which was never the case and was certainly covered by the fact that my position and the one that council agreed to was that the advertising would be decided by competition and go to the lowest bid.
Which as indeed been proven by the fact that each paper as had the advertising for one year.
So lets get back to the dollars and cents did this attempt to save taxpayers dollars work?

2008 the municipality spent $98865.07
2009 $39994.10 was spent
2010 to the end of August we spent $15157.24 prorated to the end of the year that would come to $22735.86 a drop of $76129.21 since 2008.

Competition is a good thing and I certainly hope that the next council takes the same position on engineering.