City bathrooms

Bureaucracy has run amok. The purpose of government regulations are to protect the people and the environment, both worthy goals, but in practice things have moved to the extreme. President Obama spoke eloquently about shovel ready jobs but when it came time to implement, he ran into some snags. Despite the promise of a rapid economic boost, many projects took months or even years to get off the ground. Complex planning, permitting, and environmental review processes caused delays, meaning funding could not be deployed as quickly as anticipated. One simple example can illustrate the whole point. San Fransico decided to build one public toilet and the estimated cost was $1.7 million. Most of the cost went for permitting fees of various sorts. Two private companies agreed to donate the materials and labor to build the toilet which they proceeded to do. The final cost was $300,000 mostly for permitting. The toilet is a 10 by 15-foot structure about the size of the master bath in most new homes.