Tax dollars at work

Yesterday, I saw our tax dollars at work. Just as I was heading out to do some errands, I heard a crashing sound. Once I decided that nothing had happened in the house, I proceeded to the car with my load of dry cleaning and other materials for errands. Then, I saw the devastation. A branch had come off the tree on our lawn. The high winds had snapped a branch that was over a foot in diameter. The branch was laying on the neighbours car. It seemed that the car was okay except for this branch.
I went inside and called hydro and told them about the branch. Hydro arrived in less than an hour. Hydro moved the wire and managed to have it suspended above the branch. We lost power for about half an hour. When I asked hydro about the branch, it seems that it is not their problem.
Another call to the city resulted in someone coming to look at the branch and leave a notice that the tree will be inspected. (I certainly hope so, this is about the third or fourth time that a branch has come down and the second time that a car has been damaged.) Then the city tree people came and proceeded to clean up all the branches and soon there was no evidence that anything had happened except for the rear window of the neighbours car which was smashed to smithereens as the branch slide down the car. Too bad we weren't able to stabilize the branch but with the hydro wire in the way we were not going to do that.
Must say that everything went quite well, although I would not want to be the neighbour.