Making Arlington County’s Grandees Look Conservative
To support their argument for the Columbia Pike trolley, the Arlington County Board touts the light rail system in Portland, Oregon. Well, if anyone in the bureaucracy at Courthouse Plaza mentions installation of high-tech toilets around Arlington, you can point them to a West Coast city where they’ve proven to be a waste of taxpayer money.
Last week, the Seattle Times asked whether five “gleaming, cylindrical public restrooms” in the city were worth $6.6 million. The toilets were supposed to be “an oasis of cleanliness and decency, but the newspaper reports:
“With automatic doors, toilet seats that retract for high-pressure cleanings, and a high-tech system to scrub down the floors, the $6.6 million toilet project was deemed a humane, if pricey, investment -- for tourists, and especially for the city's homeless.
“On Seattle streets since 2004, each toilet is now used an average 332 times a day, down substantially from previous years, according to records kept by the maintenance company, Northwest Cascade. But with regular use comes misuse. Prostitution and drug-dealing were predicted and, it seems, are taking place in the restrooms.”
It’s amazing what bureaucrats are capable of when asked to solve problems. Obviously, they’re not thinking about taxpayers.