Exactly. I'm wondering if the OP works for Verizon

Are you kidding me? The ST-251's were AWESOME. Granted, you needed to run Norton Disk Doctor before you ever used it to weed out the bad sectors from the factory, but once you were past that point, it was 40MB of pure reliability.

As yet another Scoutmaster, let me say that if they are doing things outside the "Guide to Safe Scouting" (pointed out in sibling post), you're not covered by the scouts' insurance policy. So if somebody gets hurt, BSA will deny everything, and the parent gets sue the person running the camp personally.

As a friend of mine used to say... "Children are a by-product."

I am also a Manhattan-area resident. (Work in Manhattan, commute due to cheap housing with a short drive.) I did some IT work for BRI (which, as you pointed out later, is a BSL-3, and can be made into a BSL-4 with some minor, but expensive, modifications). I got to go on a tour before it went live. If I'm anywhere near that building when a tornado warning hits, that's where I'm heading. It's is as close to impervious as anywhere I've ever seen.

True, that's probably average. However, my house is <25 miles from the proposed facility. It's current value is $140k, with 3500 sq. ft. and sits on a quarter of a city block. Prices drop off rapidly outside 5 miles from the university.

I've done some IT work for the Biosecurity Research Institute - the BSL-3 "little brother" to this proposed lab in Manhattan KS, and a large reason why the committee decided to put the lab here. I guarantee you that if a tornado is heading toward this area, that's where I'm heading - it will be the safest place to be for miles around, including underground.

In this case, having the lab in Kansas probably hurts (or at least has the potential for hurting) the members of whatever House district this thing is supposed to be located in more than NOT having it would.

Yeah, having approx. 300 full-time research jobs at $100,000+/year is *really* going to hurt the district.

... but they are so accustomed to the gravy train that ...

I think you've got something backwards here. My brother is a chiro, and he does accept lower prices for cash. Why? Because he doesn't have to deal with the [censored] insurance company. Dealing with cash is painless, but dealing with insurance takes almost all of his staff's time.

upgrading a ground car to flight costs US$40,000

You're off by a few orders of magnitude - $39,999,999. (or maybe the last 9 was a 5). I remember first watching and hearing the 39,999 and thinking "wow, inflation" followed a split second later by "but I really guess that's not SO bad", and then he gave the extra '999' and I about choked.