Expensive Holidays – This Experiment isn’t Adding Up

The so-called Suffolk County hack holidays – Bunker Hill Day and Evacuation Day – were literally done away with last year when the governor agreed with the Legislature that more money would be saved than is spent keeping Suffolk County offices open on these two days than closed.

 

So two important historical events – the evacuation of the port of Boston and the Battle of Bunker Hill holidays were relegated to the dustbin of history with the thinking behind the move that money will be saved by ridding ourselves of foolish holidays that no one else celebrates.

 

AT any other time in our national history, such a move might have made common sense – but not in the modern world we live in.

 

Because of union contracts which guarantee the holidays as paid, even if the holidays cease to exists the public employees in Suffolk County must be paid.

 

In other words, the hack holidays are no more.

 

The price tag for getting rid of them, an added $2 million over what it cost to honor the holidays.

 

As for the holidays themselves, we can understand doing away with Evacuation Day. No lives were lost when the Americans mounted cannon at Dorchester Heights and fired rounds at the British Fleet sitting in Boston Harbor causing the evacuation of the fleet from the harbor.

 

Bunker Hill Day honors hundreds who died or who were wounded in of the most momentous battles of the era against the vaunted British who had not been challenged in 300 years.

 

Bunker Hill Day should remain a significant day of memorial for those who lost their lives there in the name of the revolution.

 

But it won’t and that’s a shame.

 

And now we have to pay more to do away with the holiday than to keep it.

 

 

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *