Questions are being raised over the price tag of a public toilet in San Francisco.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the single toilet is costing the city $1.7 million. It will be located near 24th Street in Noe Valley's main commercial corridor.
Supervisors said they got the funding from the state budget to build the restroom per requests of families in the area.
In a joint statement issued to the newspaper, the Park and Rec Department of Public Works said there are several reasons for the costs, including the cost to build in the city and the rising construction costs for materials.
“It's crazy. It's just sort of an artifact of everything going crazy in the city,” said former San Francisco resident, Michael Papanek. “How could it possibly be 1.7 million dollars?”
There was supposed to be an announcement by state and local public officials Wednesday, proclaiming their success in securing the funding from the state.
But they abruptly cancelled it once word of the price tag got out.
“It sounds so fishy,” said Dalia Martinez, former San Francisco resident. “And given that they were gonna announce it today and they just bailed, it's just, so suspicious.”
The only elected official who has responded to any of our questions about the project, and the price tag, is assemblymember Matt Haney. He was able to get the $.17 million from Sacramento.
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"I'll defer questions about the cost for the bathroom to Rec and Park,” he said in a statement. “The cost also seemed shockingly-high to me. They told me they couldn't build it for less, so if I wanted a public bathroom there, that's how much I had to deliver."
NBC Bay Area reached out to Park and Rec for a breakdown of costs but have not heard back.
The restroom would be completed until 2025.
The city already operates a whole bunch of free public restrooms, some of them even available 24 hours a day and fit within the 150-square-foot footprint at Noe Valley.
The cost to the city is nothing.
According to the San Francisco Department of Public Works, it has a deal with the company JC Decaux to provide the self-cleaning public potties for free in exchange for advertising revenue made from the units.
By the end of this year, brand new ones will be getting installed throughout San Francisco to replace the aging ones -- all for free.
