Is deferring maintenance smart?

To cope with economic challenges many municipalities, school systems, government operations, and businesses have been saving money by deferring their maintenance activities. Is deferring maintenance a smart way to control costs? Are these short term focused decisions causing long term catastrophes? Have you seen Deferred MaintenaXe? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QEHfd-hZG8 This spoof commercial that advocates deferring maintenance shows using this approach as a norm sacrifices prosperity of tomorrow for the betterment of today. The sad part of about Deferred MaintenaXe commercial is that so many organizations actually do defer maintenance as their norm to deal with new issues. Despite economic setbacks organizations, still need to mitigate corrective maintenance issues with creative approaches until increases emerge. Just ignoring the issue only allows the problems to grow and become more expensive to repair if possible. What do you suggest more companies need to do to address deferred maintenance issues?