Rediscovering the spirit of San Francisco Republicans
By Bill Jackson and Jay Donde
We built the Golden Gate Bridge for $35 million in the 1930s — about $758 million in today’s dollars. It took four years and four months. That same decade we built the Bay Bridge for $77 million — a bit more than $1.5 billion in today’s dollars. Construction took three years and five months.
Last week, we almost celebrated a plan to construct a single new toilet in the Noe Valley Town Square that was projected to cost $1.7 million and take three years. That’s right, $1.7 million for a commode in about the same time it took to build two of the most iconic bridges in the state, if not the world. Things sure have changed in San Francisco.
Assemblymember Matt Haney secured state funds for the project and local politicos, including State Senator Scott Weiner, District 8 Supervisor Raphael Mandelman, and General Manager of SF Rec and Parks Phil Ginsburg, were all lined up to celebrate the news at a press conference this past Wednesday — until Chronicle columnist Heather Knight pointed out how ridiculous the plan is.
How have we come to this?
It’s not surprising that it’s expensive to build things in this city. Our structures need to be able to withstand earthquakes. Space is tight. We have high standards for design and durability. Supply chains are less reliable. Sadly, our construction costs may now be the highest in the world.
But the real reason it’s so expensive to build in San Francisco is that our elected representatives don’t seem to care any more about profligate spending. When your city budget is already $14 billion for a city of 800 thousand souls, what’s another couple million for a toilet?
As Assembly Member Haney told Heather Knight, “They (San Francisco Rec and Park) told me $1.7 million, and I got $1.7 million. I didn’t have the option of bringing home less of the bacon when it comes to building a toilet. A half a toilet or a toilet-maybe-someday is not much use to anyone.”
But he did have the option of saying: “What? Are you out of your mind? Come back with a cheaper, more reasonable plan!”
Sadly, Ginsburg told Heather Knight that the Noe Valley bathroom isn’t the only overpriced commode the city has constructed in recent years. Similar ones in McLaren Park and Alamo Square cost $1.6 million and $1.7 million respectively. Nobody objected then, he said.
As Knight explained, one reason that projects like this costs so much is that city law requires Rec and Park to seek approval from or partner with Public Works, the Planning Department, the Department of Building Inspection, the Arts Commission, the Public Utilities Commission, the Mayor’s Office of Disability, and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. There are also multiple required steps in the public input process. (See the full breakdown of the $1.7M cost.)
For a toilet.
At the end of the day, the budgets and timelines are what they are because nobody steps back to look at the big picture. Knight quotes Kanishka Cheng, a former city planner who’s now the executive director of Together SF Action: “No one’s in charge. Nobody’s coordinating with each other. Nobody’s seeing the priority as delivering the project quickly, efficiently, under budget and on time.”
How about a prefab toilet? That’s a theoretical possibility but, alas, we might not be able to get a good one at a competitive price because our supervisors have passed laws that prohibit the city from contracting with companies in 30 states. A recent analysis by the city’s Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated that these laws are increasing the price of some city contracts by about 20%.
Fixing this problem is not going to be easy. We’re going to have to peel away some of our regulations, make contracting rules more flexible, and spend less time gathering public input. We’re going to need leaders at multiple levels of city government that know how to prioritize the common interest above special interests.
Perhaps this is a job for Republicans.
Republicans have a long history of building big things in this city just as national Republicans like Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt built great things for the nation in their day. “Sunny Jim” Rolph, mayor from 1912 to 1931, oversaw the construction of the two tunnels that carry Muni light rail trains out to the Sunset district. The Golden Gate and Bay Bridges were built when Republican Angelo Joseph Rossi occupied City Hall. All of these leaders were good at delivering projects on time and under budget.
The modern Republican Party and San Francisco government both need to refocus on a growth agenda that’s less about fighting over who gets what share of the pie and more about making the pie bigger for everyone. Democrats spent decades dismissing supply side economics, but liberal wonks – confronted for the first time in a generation with the inflationary costs of unchecked spending and overregulation – have recently come to embrace the idea and are trying to rebrand it as the “abundance agenda” or “supply side progressivism.”
We need leaders who know how to step back and look at the big picture — who make it a priority to deliver projects quickly, efficiently, under budget, and on time. As a start, we’ve proposed that a new, independent board of auditors be established to evaluate the efficacy of city spending.
Beyond that, we need a new generation of leaders in City Hall that reflect the spirit captured in a poem written by Joseph Strauss, the chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge.
An honored cause and nobly fought,
And that which they so bravely wrought
Now glorifies their deed;
No selfish urge shall stain its life,
Nor envy, greed, intrigue, nor strife,
Nor false, ignoble creed.
That’s the spirit the Briones Society is working to reinvigorate so that we can once again earn our reputation as The City That Knows How.
Jay Donde and Bill Jackson are co-founders of the Briones Society. If you’d like to learn more about the Briones Society, please sign up for our newsletter and reach out to us at info@brionessociety.org.