According to this article in the Trib today, Hillsborough County spent $700,000 on a mosquito spray plane (disguised as a very nice passenger plane), but the problem is the plane couldn't actually spray for mosquitoes. Why? Because it was a passenger plane! No worries, they wanted to retrofit it all along to be able to spray (uh-huh). The plane pictured in that article seems better-suited to carry dive gear and flip-flops to some warm destination somewhere. I challenge officials to find any government in the country using this make and model of an airplane as a "spray plane."
One check of the county's website shows information about our mosquito control helicopter which seems to actually work as a spraying helicopter — with no mention of da plane, boss, da plane.
Evidently this "spray plane" has been sitting around costing you money all this time (6 years). These figures from the article show the cost just over the past two years alone:
This article appears in Dec 16-22, 2009.