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Your Tax Dollars at Work road sign cost

binki

binki

New Member
The numbers came from public information.

"The records and documents were obtained through the California Public Records Act (CPRA) process – and cover only materials received back from the CA Dept. of Transportation (Caltrans), local transportation agencies in San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange County, the Bay Area, and Sacramento. Other local government agencies also receive and spend gas tax funds – raising the question of how many more examples of waste of gas tax funds exist."

"Everyone is seeing a variety of Caltrans and local transportation signs pop up along the freeways declaring “Your Tax Dollars at Work.” The signs are stirring controversy as a thinly veiled attempt to campaign against Prop 6 using taxpayer funds.

Just how much do these signs cost taxpayers? OCTA issued a “Change Order” for the I-405 freeway project signs that led to a cost increase of $32,644.25 – or a total cost of 6,528.85 for EACH sign! The contract plainly states that it only includes the design, production, and installation of five roadside signs that said “OC-GO ‘Your Tax Dollars at Work’” and also included the SB 1 logo."

Exposed here: https://gastaxrepeal.org/yes-on-6-r...n-caltrans-and-local-transportation-agencies/
https://freebeacon.com/politics/cal...paign-cites-epic-levels-taxpayer-waste-abuse/

BTW, Gas in Los Angeles is over $4\Gallon and some stations are close to $5.
 
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equippaint

Active Member
This is a political ad. Come on, think for yourself and quit spreading nonsense. Show the contract, you could have found the real truth in the time you spent here.
People that work for the county and state are regular people like all of us, they are responsible for their money just the same as private enterprise. They're not stupid.
 
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bannertime

Active Member
binki said:
The numbers came from public information. "The records and documents were obtained through the California Public Records Act (CPRA) process .... Just how much do these signs cost taxpayers? OCTA issued a “Change Order” for the I-405 freeway project signs that led to a cost increase of $32,644.25 – or a total cost of 6,528.85 for EACH sign! The contract plainly states that it only includes the design, production, and installation of five roadside signs that said “OC-GO ‘Your Tax Dollars at Work’” and also included the SB 1 logo."
Click to expand...

While I don't doubt it, no one has actually produced the document that showed it. Articles just keep talking about them.
 
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Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
That still sounds very fishy. 5 signs? That's it? Despite that data it just doesn't make any sense.

I'm quite a "road geek," and pay attention to lots of different highway signs, particularly when some hack does a terrible job designing or fabricating them. There's really no excuse to get those kinds of signs wrong but it happens all the time.

Just one freeway interchange can have a large quantity of signs, from the big green signs down to the small reassurance route markers mounted on U-channel posts. Very few people notice just how many traffic control signs can be installed at just one highway intersection until they see project sheets showing the road schematics and location of signs. Any state will have dozens of road building and improvement projects on-going at any time. Yet Caltrans is going to order only 5 signs to advertise that SB1 initiative? 5 of those signs would only be enough to cover a simple project at one location.

I suspect somebody somewhere in that chain of information (or mis-information) dropped a zero after that 5, either accidentally or on purpose. An order of 50 of those signs could top $30,000 easily. Caltrans could have ordered hundreds of those things.
 
binki

binki

New Member
I can only show what was reported. I don't doubt the story or the numbers. It is a California thing, lots of insider deals and transfers of money. Hardly a week goes by without a few stories like this.
 
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Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
I still have very strong doubts about it. Yeah, I'm sure there is waste and abuse of taxpayers' dollars. However, I think the general public has a very distorted idea of government operation and how far their tax dollars will go. That's why it took Oklahoma over 25 years to get a fuel tax hike even though road building and maintenance is far more expensive now than it was in 1993. BTW, most of that extra gas tax money is going to teacher pay (since Oklahoma has some of the worst paid teachers in the nation and is losing many of its good teachers to other states). Voters still had kittens over the fuel tax hike, claiming the politicians were "lining their pockets" and yadda yadda yadda.

Couple that syndrome with the undeniable fact many media outlets, social media outlets are politically driven web sites are in the business of yanking people's chains. They routinely, deliberately distort the truth (or outright lie), conveniently omit information, prop up straw men and use any other tactic they can to incite fear and anger in their audience. It makes them money. The more they get people upset and angry the more those people keep coming back to eat up more emotionally charged swill. I consider it a form of pornography. Millions of Americans are addicted to it. I think these outlets of "news" would broadcast executions if they thought they could get away with it.

Usually a legit news story will be corroborated by multiple sources, with at least one or more of those sources providing a straight, dispassionate account of the details.
 
Billct2

Billct2

Active Member
If the cost includes a truck with install crew, a couple of traffic control trucks and a cop I believe it.
 
binki

binki

New Member
A little history about this. A pretty large gasoline and car registration tax was passed by the legislature a while back and the effort to roll it back is what the fight is about.The signs were erected to market the use of road tax dollars for road work but prior to that over the last 10 years or more nearly all of the road tax money was spent on other things that are not roads. They even passed laws banning the construction of new highway lanes.

So yes, it is a passionate struggle on both sides. The main thing is the cost of the sign installation. It seems excessive to poke 2 holes in the ground and knock it up.
 
Rick

Rick

Certified Enneadecagon Designer
I am 100% against using tax dollars for these signs.. unless I'm the one contracted to do them... I'm sending a bill to the State of California, I demand my .01327 cents back
 
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ikarasu

Active Member
We do tons of signs like this. Most temp 1-2 year signs are done on 4x8s.. Sheeted with 3m reflective, then shipped out to the city where they have their own installers.

Their installers are union... And they Make government wages. On the side of a highway they need to drop one of those big portable electric signs about a week in advanced alerting drivers it'll be single lane on a specific night, for specific hours.

Then they come.back usually very very late, 2-3 flaggers directing traffic, then a few people digging : planting the signs with concrete.

We've put a sign up like this in under a few hours with just a few people on private property. Once a city gets involved...

Usually they hire an engineer to look it over. A truck + a digital sign rental for one week.... 2 trucks and 3 flaggers, along with a crew of 3-4 guys working during night shift for 4-5 hours... It adds up. They may also be including the cost of removing the sign once it comes down.

When it comes to government work.. It gets expensive. Shouldn't, but it does.

A new political party won the elections here a few years ago. All these 12x8 signs we did for them... They decided they didn't like some of the logos on them. They spent 9000 about on some.cover up reflective (artwork and sizing needed to be done for each sign,so it was very labor intensive) ... Just to cover 2 logos on about 25 signs. Let alone the amount of money they spent having their guys drive around putting the decals on the signs...half of which were coming down in a few months anyways.

I don't know if they spent $6000 for that sign... But as unreasonable as it sounds, it wouldn't surprise me. We do a lot.of..government contracts... On average they pay twice as much if not more than regular jobs, just because of all the hoops they make you jump through.
 
mjkjr

mjkjr

New Member
If the money for road projects didn't come from taxes, where the hell else would it have come from? Shouldn't we be assuming all roadwork projects are taxpayer funded? I would think if any were private donor funded then *they* would want some signs up for the benefits of philanthropy, wouldn't they? This just seems redundant from the get go.
 
MikePro

MikePro

New Member
just throwing it out there, but roadside signage/lighting usually requires more than just digging a hole and setting the sign. A lot of the expense comes from multiple trips, survey>concrete&matchplate pour/install>sign install with breakaway bolt system.

totally agreeable, however, that the government is anything but efficient when it comes to spending OUR money.
 
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CanuckSigns

Active Member
If the installer needs to hire police and traffic control to shut down a lane of freeway I can see this costing around that, all of these things need to be coordinated and there are minimum charges (if you hire the police to safely shut down a lane of traffic, it will be a minimum of 2 cars for a minimum of 8 hours, regardless of how long you are actually on site for)

I just quoted a banner removal at $1600, it's about 15 feet up on the side of a building, I would happily do it off a ladder, but the client (a hospital) insists that their health & safety committee says we need to use a lift, so I need to rent a lift, have it delivered and picked up, the client is insisting the installer has to sit through some safety video for 1 hour before they can go on site.

The bulk of the job is the lift rental & my time to organize the lift rental, plus waiting for the lift to be delivered (why can they never be on time, always 2 hours late), and paying my installer to sit in on a safety video, the removal itself will take less than 15 minutes.

that is how costs get inflated!
 
Texas_Signmaker

Texas_Signmaker

Very Active Signmaker
CanuckSigns said:
If the installer needs to hire police and traffic control to shut down a lane of freeway I can see this costing around that, all of these things need to be coordinated and there are minimum charges (if you hire the police to safely shut down a lane of traffic, it will be a minimum of 2 cars for a minimum of 8 hours, regardless of how long you are actually on site for)

I just quoted a banner removal at $1600, it's about 15 feet up on the side of a building, I would happily do it off a ladder, but the client (a hospital) insists that their health & safety committee says we need to use a lift, so I need to rent a lift, have it delivered and picked up, the client is insisting the installer has to sit through some safety video for 1 hour before they can go on site.

The bulk of the job is the lift rental & my time to organize the lift rental, plus waiting for the lift to be delivered (why can they never be on time, always 2 hours late), and paying my installer to sit in on a safety video, the removal itself will take less than 15 minutes.

that is how costs get inflated!
Click to expand...

Short sighted on their part... If you get hurt, they have a customer that will make them tens of thousands.
 
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