Cost of races in Austin

The latest issue of Austin Runner has an article discussing the increasing cost of racing in Austin. There are a few interesting things there, one of them was the increasing use and requirements for barricades. In recent races the last year I've also noticed just more barricades at each intersection. I think I'm more inclined to agree with John Conley's sentiment about making the requirements really meet the needs and not just add barricades for the sake of adding barricades.

The other thing that struck me as odd was that the City's solution to keep costs low is to have city workers do the barricading of the events. How does that impact the businesses that make their living with barricading? Something about the City increasing barricading requirements, which raises the costs for the barricading companies and then coming back with an option that cuts out those companies if the City does the barricading donsn't quite make sense to me. Why not just keep the rules simple and the overhead low and streamline the process for the local businesses involved so they can keep the costs low since this is the core of the business.