This could not be a better post. If the board is too dumb to understand how it is to work for the government and then complain about the billing after working for them then they deserve to resign. This is probally the most expensive tractor in the world today and if it were destroyed in transit how would you ever replace it and that to me makes this tractor priceless and that is why the smith has demend such a high standard for working on it. The backround checks and all the other paper work involved in this. The 12hr that was charged for this I am supprised that this was allowed for the Mechanics that worked on this considering that this was a government piece and when you do government work you normally have to pay scale wages and I am sure that 12 dollars would not meet scale and also is 30000 dollars to much to preserve the first tractor in the world that just happens to be made by a company that is in the initials of our club. I know that there are a lot of tractors out there that if you figured up the time that it to that could approch this figure and I am sure that there are collectors out there that have payed this much to have a restoration done on one of there old tractors. This is a priceless icon that I am glad was restored and seems to me that the people running this club are getting mad over something that they odviously can&#039;t understand and maybe they should not be running the club as there are supposedly requriment for treasurer there should be for the other officers as well. I have not been priviy to anything but the conversations on these boards but can understand the cost involved here when working for the government and consider that we got off cheap at 30000 and as a member think that this is money well spent on a priceless icon of our clubs history. Eric