As has been said multiple times before, it's not $2 million to keep this kid's school project running for another 30 years, it's $2 million for a better HVAC automation system. They've probably pissed away multiples of $2 million in energy costs not having a better system in place the past 30 years.
No kidding, but that's not how the article was written. My second paragraph was a comment on that.
Every budget ever written stuffs things that management thinks can be put off until later into funding for things that absolutely need to be done today.
That said, I'm pretty sure I could get an Amiga emulator running on a Raspberry Pi for a lot less than $1.5 million.