My favorite recurring segment on Weakonomics has to be the Weaky Awards.  I get to make fun of people for making stupid decisions that cost them tons of money.  One of the founding principles of Weakonomics is the government doesn’t have a better clue than the typical consumer.  Today I get to kill two birds with one figurative shiny brass trophy.  Today the Weaky goes to the City of Seattle, Washington.

Seattle had a problem.  There were a number of pedestrians and homeless folks out on their streets every day.  The problem though was a shortage of places to relieve one’s self.  Seattle decided to install 5 self cleaning toilets in various parts of the city.  They work by sealing up and washing the entire structure (the size of a large bathroom) with industrial solvents and cleansers each time someone uses the facility.  Great idea right?

Well there were some problems.  First of all the cleaning process was not working as advertised.  Though the washroom scrub down was working, the removal of human matter sometimes did not.  Users of the facility might find themselves walking in on a chunk of human debris that didn’t make it through the post flush procedure.  City maintenance had to be called out often to remove and re-clean the facility.

Better still though, drug dealers and prostitutes found themselves a simple, secure, and easy place to exchange products or services.  The first of two articles goes into greater detail.  Its two years old but they do talk about their plans to save the program.  These included installing a camera on ONE of the FIVE to deter criminals and banning more than one person going in at a time.  Yeah we’ll get started on policing the jay-walking problem in cities by putting up a camera and telling citizens its not allowed.  That should work.

In the end, Seattle decided to dump the program.  Well its not as easy as letting them sit around like nasty monstrosities.  They had a service contract to break, the cost of the bathrooms to recover, and the expenses of returning the locations of the bathrooms to their previous state.  All told that cost is for than $1 million per bathroom.  Thats a $5 million skid mark on their record.

On the bright side they were able to sell the bathrooms.  Maybe they can recover most of the cost?  Their first attempt of an auction failed to get any interest in the minimum bid of $89,000.  So they tried again with no minimum.  Selling price: just above $12,500.  After auction fees the city of Seattle walks away with a whopping 10 grand.  That is a return on their investment of NEGATIVE 99.8%.  That’s -99.8%.  Wow.  Read the second article to get the details of the sale.  Also, the guy that bought them is great, he’s in there too.

Read first report
Read $12,000 sale report

Related posts:

1. Weaky Awards
2. Weaky #4
3. Weaky Awards #2
4. Weaky Awards #3
5. Weaky Awards #1

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