Posted on 10/09/2018 1:39:58 AM PDT by bgill
The Austin City Council on Thursday will vote on whether to approve a contract to clean and empty a single portable toilet in the downtown area. The cost? A minimum of $115,000 per year. The contract will initially be for two years, with the ability for it to be reauthorized each year thereafter for a total of five years at a cost not to exceed $775,000, or $155,000 per year. The portable toilet would be located within five miles of the State Capitol and must be cleaned twice a day, including refilling water and removing waste because it does not have its own plumbing.
(Excerpt) Read more at kxan.com ...
Q:How many unionized public employees does it take to change a lightbulb?
A:”Eight. You gotta problem with that?”
Well its better than turning the streets into SanFran style of public hygiene?
Sounds like they are contracting with an outside vendor. The cost actually sounds reasonable to me. Would you be able to clean and refill the water in a portable toilet for $115,000 a year?
This appears to be one of those situations where the people demanding a service don’t think about the cost, only their benefits.
The “facility is probably no more than 20 feet from public sewer and water.
We have a septic tank. The guy comes out with his truck, puts the hose in, flips the on switch, a few minutes later flips the off switch. Drives away to the dump site. A little port-a-potty would empty in less than a minute.
2400/14=171.42 per trip, if twice a day means everyday.
Not bad to drive a truck, resupply, labor and dump fees.
When ever you see an government contract for a service that is way out of line think kick back. Someone is getting money back from the contractor.
It does not have to be in the form of cash in an envelope, it could just be a generous campaign donation. Or a donation to a charity (run by one of the politicians).
The chance are, the toilet will never even be cleaned.
Single toilet at full service, including waste-removal and adding water, 2X per day - probably 7 days/week....find a reliable source to do it for less than that...the contract is fine -— if it is truly necessary to have that toilet in that spot under those conditions....
Yep - reasonable cost for those standards - the question is whether the toilet needs to be there.
Adios, Austin!
Really, the price is not that outrageous. $115,000 per year = $315 per day. When done twice a day it boils down to about $158 per cleaning.
This job likely requires one person with a tonner truck that has a vacuum tank, vacuum pump, fresh water tank and pump plus the tools, safety gear etc. Counting travel time, probably a two hour job. At $80 per hour it’s quite reasonable. You are not going to hire a backhoe, loader or dump truck at that price in that locale.
The problem is the portable toilet idea. I bet for that same $115,000 they could have a conventional toilet with real plumbing built. Maintenance costs would be pennies thereafter. It’s a stupid idea.
“A little port-a-potty would empty in less than a minute.”
Construction sites always have porta potties. Certainly they cost less than $115k per year. Austin needs to use those standard items.
I agree with the other poster that it should be easy to hook those in-town bathrooms into the water/sewer system.
https://www.fixr.com/costs/portable-toilets
Based on the information at the link, the weekly cost of a standard port-a-potty would be about $800 (the twice daily service adds a lot to the cost). The estimate is about $260/week including 2 services, each additional service adds $45. A deluxe potty would add roughly another $200 or so, but a long-term contract would get you a better price than a weekly one.
800 x 52 = $41.6K
I wonder if someone on the Austin city council has a brother-in-law in the sanitation business.
OK, so what is the truck, equipment, fuel, maintenance, and dump site going to cost you?
“I agree with the other poster that it should be easy to hook those in-town bathrooms into the water/sewer system.”
Still going to have to clean it a couple of times a day. Unlike a conventional bathroom, port o potties don’t flush which means a stuffed toilet first thing in the morning turns into a freaking mess by lunch. Then again after lunch and god knows what would happen after the last cleaning until morning.
Think of one of the old gas station toilets.
The high school I attended was built in 1969 and considered very high tech. I worked in the library there the first year. We had a bank of 30 or so open reel tape decks that broadcast their signal to a wireless system around the library. Kids could check out receivers and listen to stuff. I took a wollensack portable open reel home and stuck a mic up to the speaker on our B&W TV and recorded Charlie Brown Christmas and we played it there. We also had a huge open reel video recorder. Oh, and closed loop film players that could be checked out to watch a bunch of short films. There were around 1500 students.
Why do I mention this? Because it was touted as the “Million dollar” high school.
Price inflation is how the government robs its people. It’s not that 100k is a lot to clean a bathroom. It’s that 100k isn’t worth that much.
One toilet is good for a crew of 10 for a week. A single porta potty in an urban setting may need cleanout daily. They aren’t always cleaned up on site, sometimes pulled and replaced to clean up at the yard.
I rented some over the summer. To send a cleanout truck midweek was $50. I think the cost to rent 5 of them was about $400
They might find that placing multiple units at the same site is almost the same cost.
It could be replaced for $1,500 or less.
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