So I attended ArtoberFest yesterday for the first time ever. Not out of any need to paint my face or eat food truck fare…but rather to further prove my point about the colossal waste of a NO-BID $185,000 bathroom in Campbell Park.
I would peg the crowd at maybe 100 people – and I was there at 2:30 in the afternoon. I guess that would be considered ‘major’ by Lampasas standards. Maybe another 100 moved through there during the day before and after I was there. Point being, the head of the Parks Department chimed in last month that there are “four major events a year there, so we need a bathroom” or something to that effect. My argument is that a couple of Porta-Potties should handle that need just fine – especially when your “huge crowds” of 150 people only happen about 3 to 5 total days a year (or roughly 1% of the time).
The sanitation needs were met by J Bar Sanitary Restrooms – and they were SPECTACULAR! I do not work for J Bar. I have never heard of J Bar until yesterday. But their Porta-potties are the best I have ever seen. No joke. I highly recommend. They were pristine.
And guess what else?? They are cheap as dirt! You can rent one of these for an entire WEEK for $115! That is a steal. Of course, somebody overdid it with FOUR of these things when two would have sufficed yesterday, but whatever. Here is a shot of $460 dollars worth of toilets – it would take over 100 years to spend that same $185,000 on Porta-Potties, by the way:
The bathroom I used looked like it hadn’t been used all day – and that was 4.5 hours into the festival. So I’m pretty sure two of these would have sufficed – for a total cost of only about $250 to the city.
But let’s take it a step further! There were about 6 food trucks and 12 other vendors there – which (according to the Chamber of Commerce website) should have brought in close to $1000 in fees from those vendors. Why should the city pay anything at all? Take the $250 from your vendor revenue and voila….a zero-cost, extremely clean bathroom at every ‘major’ event. Bathrooms that are hassle-free and DON’T NEED TO BE CLEANED by the City!!
I realize that my plan outlined above makes logical, rational and economic sense. It is bulletproof and has already been proven to work….which is why Spinley and the Seven Goldfish are ignoring it and instead plowing ahead with the idiotic $185,000 no-bid bathroom [page 67]….a bathroom that will also have to be cleaned by somebody – a somebody who will be on the City payroll [page 73] and reaping tons of benefits that will likely cost the taxpayer $30 an hour.
Spinley assures us that “the Campbell park restrooms should be delivered the first or second week of December“. Of course, he didn’t specify what year the “December” would fall in. Watch for the usual cost overruns and delays in completion like we saw with the Magic Elevator at Old City Hall.
Only in Lampasas can you find dummies who want to spend $185,000 to solve a ‘problem’ that can demonstrably be solved for $0.
