In the immortal words of Monty Python
"We lease back the ping machine from the company we sold it too, that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account."
Think about going to government to ask for $30m in capex expenditure or going to them for a half million a month over five years. I worked for a council some years ago and these people don't think like normal human beings, believe it or not the monthly (even though long term will cost a bunch more) is a much easier sell than $30m in one gulp.