Sidebar: What can you do with $8,000,000?

We now know that the race for NY's 24th congressional district is at or beyond the $8,000,000 mark.  I did a little research to see what you can do with that kind of cash. 

Here are a few examples:

• Provide an entire year's fundraising for the United Way of Central New York, which in each of the past three years has raised less than that.
• Pay for 81% of the Onondaga Creekwalk, the wonderful paved walking trail that runs from downtown Syracuse to Onondaga Lake.
• Build just under half of the new Centro Transportation Hub, which recently opened south of downtown. The Hub was built to open up the city center, which during key times would have as many as 22 buses idling at one intersection while picking up passengers.
• Keep the music alive, by providing one year's budget for the now defunct Syracuse Symphony Orchestra.  When they shut down the SSO and filed bankruptcy, the Board of Trustees issued a statement saying, in part, "we cannot support a $7 million orchestra on a $5 million budget."
• Pay one year's starting salary (about $42,000) for 190 Syracuse City School District teachers
• Cover a full year's worth of expenses (room, board, tuition, fees, etc.) at Syracuse University - for about 144 undergrads.
• Repair a mile or so of beach wiped out by Hurricane Sandy.

Or, you could have purchased this, an $8 million iPad 2.

Seems like any of these would have been money better spent.