Dunedin, Florida - Welcome to the Dunedin Civic Center a 42-thousand square foot building complete with gym, dance studio, meeting rooms, a kids library and more.

Dunedin homeowner Jim Harpham says it's a lovely building. He adds everybody thinks it's wonderful but he thinks the cost was so out of line, it shows nobody was watching the store.

According to Harpham the center could be a poster child for government waste.

Harpham says he's mad at his government because he thinks they are inefficient as hell.

Harpham has many complaints about the center. First of all it bothers him the center is being partially paid for with a congressional earmark. This year 11,780 earmarks added $18.3 billion to the federal budget.

Harpham says people apply for the money; congress thinks it wonderful; they get re-elected by wasting his money; the cities think it is wonderful; and nobody thinks about policing it.

Dunedin Assistant City manager, Harry Gross, admits the city's take is basically as long as those funds are available they have a responsibility to bring some of that money back into Dunedin.

Gross admits the city staff designed the center $2,500,000 over budget. Elected officials rejected that design but the architect charged taxpayers an extra $150,000 for a news design.

When we asked Gross if the taxpayers have a right to be upset about that mistake he said that's not the kind of questions he can answer. Gross says his roll was to get the grant.

Meantime Harpham contends the community center wastes money and taxpayers rarely know about it. He says there is a hidden cost when governments borrow more money than they need. When that happens taxpayers have to pay it back with interest year after year after year.

According to Harpham it's a 20 year life of the bond. He says the payment is about 4 percent which is $40,000 a year. Harpham says if you multiply that by 20 years it comes out to $800,000 in extra interest.

And a major reason the city had to finance more is because the city didn't apply for the funds in a timely manner. A letter from HUD shows Congress set aside $843,000 to help fund the project in 2005. However by January of 2007 it still hadn't applied for the money. HUD even sent a letter to the city warning the grant will expire if they don't apply.

Harpham says that's mismanagement, that's what it is.

Meantime Gross says he thought he had done everything correctly, even though neither the federal government nor he had any record of him applying for the grant.

Gross says he thinks he applied for it but the federal government said it did not receive the application. Gross admits he could not find the copy of the application.

Harpham says the public should be enraged by this stuff.

And Harpham says this center is a prime example of why government often spends more than taxpayers want them to.

And that's this week's what's that costing you.