In a surprise to literally no one, San Francisco wins at street-cleaning costs.
The city spends more than four times as much as Chicago in order to keep streets clean, according to a recent budget and legislative analyst’s report. This is really sad when you factor in the size of each city respectively. San Francisco comes in at 47 square miles, Chicago at 227 square miles.
Another unsurprisingly dirty city, our very own Los Angeles, still beats San Francisco. SF spends three times as much as LA, five times as much as San Jose, and 10 times as much as San Diego.
All that spotless cleaning has San Francisco's fiscal 2016-17 spending at a total of $35 million. This year's spending has already jumped to $53.7 million and next year it is proposed to be nearly $60 million.
According to the report's co-author Fred Brousseau, the city is spending more because it provides more services and public calls for help as well as routine cleaning of homeless encampments.
“San Francisco provides these services multiple times per week — more than any of the surveyed cities,” Brousseau said. There are also more workers on the job with a cleanup staff of 302, compared to the average in other cities of 40.
Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru told the San Francisco Chronicle, “We have our crews on the ground 24/7 and have ramped up operations. We’ve expanded our partnerships with nonprofits to sweep and steam clean, and to staff Pit Stop public bathrooms.”
Nuru added, “We’re also asking the people who live and work here to pitch in and help.”
So do you hear that residents of San Francisco, in addition to the tax money you already pay to help clean the poop and needle filled streets, you still need to do more and call in those street cleanup requests.
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