As a result of citizens leaving the city during the past few years, San Francisco is losing out on tax money. It would be difficult to argue that it was a bad thing given how the city spends money.
According to the San Francisco Standard, the city's Department of Public Health gave researchers $500,000 to "evaluate the impact" of a "safe" drug consumption location named the Tenderloin Center "on the surrounding area."
Unsurprisingly, similar "secure" drug facilities have drawn addicts who reduce community safety, forcing neighbors to walk over human waste on the sidewalks and carry bats or tasers to defend themselves.
Even though "calls to the one-block span in front of the Tenderloin Center jumped by 126% this year," with an average of six calls per day, "as compared to just an 11% increase citywide," the study naturally concluded that the city's drug center wasn't doing any harm to the neighborhood.
How did scientists arrive at this conclusion? Two persons strolled around the neighborhood once each in 2018, 2019 and 2022 at the cheap sum of $500,000. The city should invest more money in more drug sites, they also concluded.
Not even that ridiculous "research" is the most extravagant spending scheme San Francisco has encountered this year. One public restroom was to cost $1.7 million to construct, according to the city.
It would have taken three years to finish the project. Even California Governor Gavin Newsom criticized the notion because it was so embarrassing, and it was ultimately dropped.
Once more, the city had plans to proceed with spending $1.7 million to construct a single public restroom in three years. Before it was mocked into cancellation, city officials had even planned a large public celebration for the project.
Without any self-reflection on the excessively high price tag, everyone involved saw this as an occasion for celebration.
The fact that San Francisco's authorities regard this amount of expenditure to be both acceptable and praiseworthy is telling. Additionally, it explains why in 2021, 116,000 people left the city.
San Francisco's government is inefficient and wasteful. They practically dare San Franciscans to remove them from office, or at the very least, to remove whoever is left when the first U-Haul leaves town.