The $450,000 Question

On Tuesday,Council voted to recommend to Council next Tuesday, approval of a $450,000 contract.
It's a project the soaks up hundreds of thousands of tax dollars each year. 
Something about it has never sat well with me. 
Sewer lines in Aurora are not antiquated. Since, the Region was created in 1971, sewers throughout the old part of town were replaced and twinned with storm sewers.
Reason was to prevent storm water from finding its way into   sanitary sewers and on to the  Region's trunk sewer system to be treated as sewage.  
For  ten years, the Town has been inserting fibreglass liners into  a relatively new system to stop infiltration of ground water into the sanitary sewer and increasing  flow into the trunk sewer system.
It's duplication of what we did before.
Anyway, on Tuesday, there was the pesky liner thing  on the agenda again  to approve yet another $450,000.  award. 
I had heard from a resident, when Nesbit Drive was re-constructed, the contractor was cutting into pristine  pipes to insert the liner. Pipes don't suffer  wear and tear or exposure to the elements buried down deep in the ground as they are.
I had asked in previous years when the project of re-lining pipes was going to be finished .
The answer was ...never. It is on-going maintenance.
Tuesday night, a new question occurred. 
How long have we been doing this ? 
Ten years, was the answer.
So, likely  ten million dollars or thereabouts  have been spent. 
The  next question was; How effective is the process? 
How much ground water has been prevented from infiltrating into the sanitary sewers?
As I  heard myself speak the words , I knew the answer.
I was astounded never-the-less.
The answer !... it is not known if the program is effective.
There is no means of measurement .
Aurora is farther advanced than any other municipality  in carrying out this program. Which means we started it before anybody else. But we still don't know it works. 
Further to that, the fibre glass materila supposed to prvent water from entering the pipes is on the inside of the pipes.
The CAO told Council he had a conversation with the CAO of the Region about that aspect of  the program on the day of my question. 
The Director of Infrastructure and Environment informed us  the Region  plans to spend millions to develop  a system of measurement to determine how much ground water is diverted from  sanitary sewers.
I asked him to repeat that he said millions. He did. 
It's kind of like that cockamamie scheme for a treatment facility to remove salt from water. Salt  that could not have existed from the beginning.That was just a million dollar boondoggle.
The Region, ten years after the re-lining program started and millions  spent, is now going to spend further millions  to find a  measurement to determine if the millions already spent was wisely spent.
You read  that  correctly my friends.
Millions of dollars of material inserted into a ,simple system 
which could not be improved upon, which  has satisfactorily served its purpose for  generations, of carrying sewage from  homes and businesses, without first  having a means to determine if  the   money would be well spent.
If that isn't a scam, I don't know how anything  else would qualify. 
Oh, and another thing. The  contract for the  work,can be extended  with a good negotiation of price. We have done that  repeatedly. 
Staff  have discovered, the Town of Newmarket has been  using  the same contractor for a unit price ten per cent less than that charged to Aurora.