Yeah, for any actual project budget (entire budget, not just construction), we figured it was about 35-40% in soft costs (design, permitting, management).
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Could just get honey bucket to drop off a few toilets for a few hundred a month.
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Sounds about right to me. So in that case 300 on 750 is not insanity.
Like this budget seems high for sure but it’s not the “lol banana republic corruption” that started this discussion. Do you disagree?
Also do agree this whole discussion is close to meaningless without knowing if this is a class 3 or class 1 budget?
I understand why that is hard to follow but it’s pretty common to include these costs. The important point is they are sunk costs. It’s salaries already being paid to civil servants. It’s just meant to track time allocation and workload. That money is never actually spent on the project. It’s just accounting.
Again let me say this budget seems high for sure but not insane. It’s the result of what zizak said. A broken development system with bad incentives and over regulation in some cases.
It’s just not corruption based on what we know so far.
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I don’t think it’s outright corruption, just the issues of bloated bureaucracy. In my county, any new building project is going to take an EPA study, sepa study, and gopher study. And the city adds other shit on.
I think it’d be a pretty good idea to scrap a lot of local, state, and federal agencies and rebuild them from scratch. Lots of unneeded parts that could be cut.
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Totally agree.
If the discussion is over/bad regulation then I am interested as that is one my my political joys I spend a lot of time on in my day to day job.
It’s a dangerous topic though because it’s easy to fall into the “lol government” side. The bureaucracy is often broken but I would still rather fix it in most cases than what the more common solution is; privatization where the bloated costs just go to CEOs.
My comment yay UP was sarcastic but out line. My apologies.
I do think this all began with some people falling for right wing talking points in a poorly researched short click bait article.
I also think the idea of “common sense” when it comes to stuff like this is really bad and leads to things like “why can’t the government balance its chequebook!”
Infrastructure is really expensive almost everywhere and if we want things like environmental regulations and living wages it will remain so. That’s not to say we don’t want to make it as cost effective as possible.
Please not like my second post conceded the question of if spending this money on a bathroom was wise. My position all along has simply been this is not corruption by any normal use of the word.
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Either they did work on the project instead of something else then those costs should absolutely be counted, or they did not work on the project and in that case why do they show up in the accounting?
+1. I was a pill addict. I have taken pills from many, many, extremely shady sources. I was talking to some other recovered pillheads and we agree many of us wouldn’t be here if we behaved like that today. It spurred a new/updated drug talk with my kids, because the stakes have changed. It used to be “You can talk to me about anything and I will never judge you - if you’re in trouble, call me and I’ll be there.” Now, it’s “If you are intent on a trying a drug, talk to me and I will help make sure that whatever you take is safe. You cannot just take random drugs from people at parties, because you might literally die.”
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Now we are debating is the civil service too large which is a fair but different discussion. I would say often it is but that is a very complex and case specific debate.
LOL
Clovis is still skeptical infrastructure costs way more in the US despite Goofy taking the time to provide several examples.
When you have a project that is partly public and private the budgeting gets a bit blurry. It would be like saying having the military come in to help after a storm cost the government more money (not counting food and accommodation in this case). The soldiers salaries were being paid no matter what.
Could the soldiers have done something else productive? If yes, then costs were incurred.
Seems like a good place to talk about California’s high speed rail line, which is never going to happen.
Original budget: $33 billion
Current budget: $113 billion lol
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You are not even trying to debate in good faith. I am just going to ignore you now.
I said I was skeptical the US is unique but hadn’t done the research. If someone shows me I am mistaken I will immediately concede as I always do.
Agree. But you can see why it’s not the same as paying an outside firm. Agree?
No, because for accomplishing this „something else“ you either have to hire more employees or pay a private company. You only have a point if they have literally nothing else to do.
This bathroom building chat is fucking boring, can we talk about NEOM? Specifically, THE LINE?
https://mobile.twitter.com/debdrens/status/1584040912313016320
https://mobile.twitter.com/debdrens/status/1584041529236426753
https://mobile.twitter.com/debdrens/status/1584042900781875200
https://mobile.twitter.com/Robbie_gr/status/1584044374215733251
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If that project didn’t exist they’d be spending the $1M on some other project, so the civil employees would probably be supporting that one. It’s still an accounting exercise.
Sounds like some flat earth fantasy world. 