San Francisco will build a $1.7 million public toilet by 2025
San Francisco’s Noe Valley Town Square was scheduled to host a celebration on Wednesday for the community’s newest victory: the construction of a single public restroom, which might cost as much as $1.7 million and will not be finished until 2025.
Due to a San Francisco Chronicle columnist’s focus on the “mind-boggling” and “maddening” particulars of the project, the celebration had to be called off.
A member of the California State Assembly named Matt Haney told the newspaper that he now finds the cost to be “inexplicable.”
“When Rec and Park first told us the number, it sounded shockingly high to me,” Haney said to the San Francisco Chronicle.
“I’m glad that Noe Valley will at some point get a bathroom, but it shouldn’t cost this much, and it shouldn’t take this long, and I’m angry about it. … It’s not something I want to celebrate right now.”
According to Fox News Digital, a spokesperson for San Francisco’s Recreation and Parks Department explained that the exorbitantly high cost is the result of “onerous demands and unpredictable costs levied by PG&E,” construction costs that have risen by 20% to 30% in the past two years, and the hiring of workers who are being paid a living wage with benefits.
The representative emphasized that the whole cost of public projects goes beyond the cost of construction. Planning, drafting, permits, reviews, public outreach, and construction management are all included in the total price.
The parks department estimates that the final cost will be less than $1.7 million, and that any money left over after construction is finished in 2025 would be used for upkeep and improvements.
Haney claimed that his constituents had been requesting for a public restroom in the town plaza ever since it first opened in 2016. Mayor London Breed of San Francisco finally announced a new public health and safety plan last December to address the city’s long-standing feces problem.
The Department of Public Works cleans the streets every day, but the feces and urine return within a few hours, Breed said at the time. “The challenges the cramped conditions, the nasty streets, and when I say nasty – full of feces and urine – that the Department of Public Works is cleaning every single day, but it comes back just a few hours later,”