5 ms·

Too many bureaucrats and construction profiteers, not enough good laborers.

by jollyllama 4y ago

hotpotamus 4y ago
- melony 4y ago
  > The public toilet will be built by union workers who will “earn a living wage and benefits,” San Francisco doesn't owe anything to the tradespeople. When you share a border with Mexico, there is absolutely no reason not to outsource. Almost every city that can rapidly scale up infrastructure have access to some type of cheap labour. The rapid construction in the middle east and asia didn't happen by using union labor for everything. Nobody likes talking about the elephant in the room but that doesn't make it any less true. Most of the red tape and bureaucracy come from having too much local rights and democracy. If you can't build housing cheaply, then no amount of union rights and progressive policies would reduce the amount of homeless people.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    Does San Fransisco owe anything to anyone?
    - BobbyJo 4y ago
      San Francisco, the government, owes the constituents it's meant to serve, and whom pay its taxes, literally everything. San Francisco, the city and community, as a society, owes what anyone in the world owes everyone else: an ethical existence.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Arrath 4y ago
  - colpabar 4y ago
    Agreed. They should honestly just use prison labor.
  - ruined 4y ago
    i mean, the city has already hired police officers, who are armed. we know they're not solving murders or catching thieves, so i'm sure there's plenty of time to round up a work crew from the local population that will benefit from the toilet
nopenopenopeno 4y ago
>not enough laborers Not enough wages. If the free market is good enough for everything else, why not for labor?
- scifibestfi 4y ago
  It's being absorbed by the bureaucrats who have made it cost $1.7M to build a single toilet.
  - nopenopenopeno 4y ago
    All government entities in the US are ultimately controlled by private corporations.
- pirate787 4y ago
  There's a non-market, political outcome that's the dominant factor in the labor market -- the degree to which the federal and state governments enforce or incentivize undocumented workers.
eweise 4y ago
The good laborers are union workers, which drives the cost up significantly.
- hexator 4y ago
  The actual labor costs for the workers are not the issue, they already don't make a lot and wages have stagnated for decades while costs have soared. Also, there's plenty of non-union areas that STILL have incredible costs. Profiteering from subcontractors and suppliers is the issue. All of these bids are public, this isn't exactly forbidden knowledge.
  - notch656a 4y ago
    So underbid them. You just found a golden goose.
  - eweise 4y ago
    "The actual labor costs for the workers are not the issue" How do you know? The article explicitly calls out union labor costs. By "profiteering" are you complaining that someone made a profit because there is nothing in the article to indicate excessive profit. Union labor is really expensive. It cost my neighbor who is part owner of the SF ferry building wine shop, over $8K to install a TV set because it had to be done with union labor. And get this, he was not allowed to install it himself because of union rules. I have another neighbor that works as a location scout for movies and commercials. He says all filming in SF has to be done by union workers and its much more expensive than filming outside SF.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- eweise 4y ago
scottyah 4y ago
There’s plenty of good laborers, they just never get invited to the table
hedora 4y ago
Actually, the construction workers found multiple issues with the plans, and were on the hook for some of the repairs. The profiteers were the engineers that designed the system. Each time they screwed up, they got to bill us more hours. Also, the contract with them stipulates zero liability for their incompetence. The state licensing board should be fired for allowing that. Also, we wanted to put in a more environmentally friendly, cheaper, and more reliable road technology (specifically, a permeable road), but the county blocked us, then made us pay to put in drainage to mitigate the effects of the obsolete thing they stipulated. Both the mandated obsolete road technology and the drain design immediately failed. The state regularly uses the disallowed permeable technology in this area. Since then, the county has approved similarly flawed designs at other sites, and the construction firm flat-out refuses to install them.
- jollyllama 4y ago
  I think we agree. I would consider the construction workers to be laborers. They're adding value. Profiteering would be collecting profit without adding value i.e. engineers and the licensing board in this case.
  - nashashmi 4y ago
    > collecting profit without adding value i.e. engineers Civil Engineers DO NOT have the upper hand in any of their designs. They propose, and upper management comments, and they propose again, and upper management comments again, and back and forth it goes. At the end of the day, all they have done is manage a series of comments, and tried to please the client rep with something like a quick and dirty fix to whatever comments they are getting. Who has the creativity? The client rep, but he is so incompetent/overloaded/unelated that all he does is either manage from high above, or just look for ways to protect himself and the City, or ask the consultant to propose solutions and makes the smallest comments possible on these solutions, while leaving majority of the comments for other offices. This leads to designs that hardly get a fight history. And more of a sychophant-driven approach just to get nitpickers out of the way.
  - cycrutchfield 4y ago
BitwiseFool 4y ago
I sincerely wonder if we have 'democratized' infrastructure and construction too much. >"First, an architect needs to draw plans for the toilet, which will then be presented to the public for feedback. The Arts Commission’s Civic Design Review committee will be responsible for conducting a “multi-phase review” of the project, like it does for all projects on public lands. According to the Arts Commission’s website, “the committee evaluates each project’s design, scale and massing for accessibility, safety and aesthetic merit.” The review process “ensures that each project’s design is appropriate to its context in the urban environment, and that structures of the highest design quality reflect their civic stature.”" I recognize that the verbiage of this quote is probably standard for construction projects in the city, and it sounds absurdly out of place for a project of this scale. That being said, at some point our elected officials just need to delegate authority and let them act mostly autonomously.
- skeeter2020 4y ago
  >> just need to delegate authority and let them act mostly autonomously. Sounds a lot like the representative democracy that created this mess in the first place.
- nashashmi 4y ago
  This arts commission is a thorn. A roadblock. And an energy drainer.
- toss1 4y ago
  Or, how about spend the money ONCE and create a set or two of architectural design standards for use in city projects? These would include aesthetic design, massing, scale, accessibility, safety, etc. This is really what the whole review is doing, attempting to make the design consistent with the surroundings, which is a worthy consideration. But literally re-inventing this wheel for every project id both wasteful and guaranteed to fail, as every committee will be different. Simply pick one or two, and maybe have a standing process to update it every decade. Then, it's just specify function, dimensions, etc., and maybe "in SF-City Style A", and put it out to bid, and passe it through maybe one or two approval processes to verify compliance before digging, or even include that in the bidding process - submit your design & costs, meeting these standards. IFF the process is good and fair, they should get many good bidders (ya, big IFF).

Too many bureaucrats and construction profiteers, not enough good laborers.

hotpotamus 4y ago

melony 4y ago
> The public toilet will be built by union workers who will “earn a living wage and benefits,” San Francisco doesn't owe anything to the tradespeople. When you share a border with Mexico, there is absolutely no reason not to outsource. Almost every city that can rapidly scale up infrastructure have access to some type of cheap labour. The rapid construction in the middle east and asia didn't happen by using union labor for everything. Nobody likes talking about the elephant in the room but that doesn't make it any less true. Most of the red tape and bureaucracy come from having too much local rights and democracy. If you can't build housing cheaply, then no amount of union rights and progressive policies would reduce the amount of homeless people.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  Does San Fransisco owe anything to anyone?
  - BobbyJo 4y ago
    San Francisco, the government, owes the constituents it's meant to serve, and whom pay its taxes, literally everything. San Francisco, the city and community, as a society, owes what anyone in the world owes everyone else: an ethical existence.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Arrath 4y ago
- colpabar 4y ago
  Agreed. They should honestly just use prison labor.
- ruined 4y ago
  i mean, the city has already hired police officers, who are armed. we know they're not solving murders or catching thieves, so i'm sure there's plenty of time to round up a work crew from the local population that will benefit from the toilet

nopenopenopeno 4y ago

>not enough laborers Not enough wages. If the free market is good enough for everything else, why not for labor?

scifibestfi 4y ago
It's being absorbed by the bureaucrats who have made it cost $1.7M to build a single toilet.
- nopenopenopeno 4y ago
  All government entities in the US are ultimately controlled by private corporations.
pirate787 4y ago
There's a non-market, political outcome that's the dominant factor in the labor market -- the degree to which the federal and state governments enforce or incentivize undocumented workers.

eweise 4y ago

The good laborers are union workers, which drives the cost up significantly.

hexator 4y ago
The actual labor costs for the workers are not the issue, they already don't make a lot and wages have stagnated for decades while costs have soared. Also, there's plenty of non-union areas that STILL have incredible costs. Profiteering from subcontractors and suppliers is the issue. All of these bids are public, this isn't exactly forbidden knowledge.
- notch656a 4y ago
  So underbid them. You just found a golden goose.
- eweise 4y ago
  "The actual labor costs for the workers are not the issue" How do you know? The article explicitly calls out union labor costs. By "profiteering" are you complaining that someone made a profit because there is nothing in the article to indicate excessive profit. Union labor is really expensive. It cost my neighbor who is part owner of the SF ferry building wine shop, over $8K to install a TV set because it had to be done with union labor. And get this, he was not allowed to install it himself because of union rules. I have another neighbor that works as a location scout for movies and commercials. He says all filming in SF has to be done by union workers and its much more expensive than filming outside SF.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
eweise 4y ago

scottyah 4y ago

There’s plenty of good laborers, they just never get invited to the table

hedora 4y ago

Actually, the construction workers found multiple issues with the plans, and were on the hook for some of the repairs. The profiteers were the engineers that designed the system. Each time they screwed up, they got to bill us more hours. Also, the contract with them stipulates zero liability for their incompetence. The state licensing board should be fired for allowing that. Also, we wanted to put in a more environmentally friendly, cheaper, and more reliable road technology (specifically, a permeable road), but the county blocked us, then made us pay to put in drainage to mitigate the effects of the obsolete thing they stipulated. Both the mandated obsolete road technology and the drain design immediately failed. The state regularly uses the disallowed permeable technology in this area. Since then, the county has approved similarly flawed designs at other sites, and the construction firm flat-out refuses to install them.

jollyllama 4y ago
I think we agree. I would consider the construction workers to be laborers. They're adding value. Profiteering would be collecting profit without adding value i.e. engineers and the licensing board in this case.
- nashashmi 4y ago
  > collecting profit without adding value i.e. engineers Civil Engineers DO NOT have the upper hand in any of their designs. They propose, and upper management comments, and they propose again, and upper management comments again, and back and forth it goes. At the end of the day, all they have done is manage a series of comments, and tried to please the client rep with something like a quick and dirty fix to whatever comments they are getting. Who has the creativity? The client rep, but he is so incompetent/overloaded/unelated that all he does is either manage from high above, or just look for ways to protect himself and the City, or ask the consultant to propose solutions and makes the smallest comments possible on these solutions, while leaving majority of the comments for other offices. This leads to designs that hardly get a fight history. And more of a sychophant-driven approach just to get nitpickers out of the way.
- cycrutchfield 4y ago

BitwiseFool 4y ago

I sincerely wonder if we have 'democratized' infrastructure and construction too much. >"First, an architect needs to draw plans for the toilet, which will then be presented to the public for feedback. The Arts Commission’s Civic Design Review committee will be responsible for conducting a “multi-phase review” of the project, like it does for all projects on public lands. According to the Arts Commission’s website, “the committee evaluates each project’s design, scale and massing for accessibility, safety and aesthetic merit.” The review process “ensures that each project’s design is appropriate to its context in the urban environment, and that structures of the highest design quality reflect their civic stature.”" I recognize that the verbiage of this quote is probably standard for construction projects in the city, and it sounds absurdly out of place for a project of this scale. That being said, at some point our elected officials just need to delegate authority and let them act mostly autonomously.

skeeter2020 4y ago
>> just need to delegate authority and let them act mostly autonomously. Sounds a lot like the representative democracy that created this mess in the first place.
nashashmi 4y ago
This arts commission is a thorn. A roadblock. And an energy drainer.
toss1 4y ago
Or, how about spend the money ONCE and create a set or two of architectural design standards for use in city projects? These would include aesthetic design, massing, scale, accessibility, safety, etc. This is really what the whole review is doing, attempting to make the design consistent with the surroundings, which is a worthy consideration. But literally re-inventing this wheel for every project id both wasteful and guaranteed to fail, as every committee will be different. Simply pick one or two, and maybe have a standing process to update it every decade. Then, it's just specify function, dimensions, etc., and maybe "in SF-City Style A", and put it out to bid, and passe it through maybe one or two approval processes to verify compliance before digging, or even include that in the bidding process - submit your design & costs, meeting these standards. IFF the process is good and fair, they should get many good bidders (ya, big IFF).