Not surprisingly, homelessness and crime are up big time in Democrat-run cities across the country, including in San Francisco, where criminals have been caught on video brazenly stealing from drugstores in the middle of the day in plain view of other customers and even security guards in some instances.

In some cases, violent crimes that were reported to police were found to have been committed by a homeless person.

It’s gotten so bad in the city that a recent poll showed close to 40% of San Franciscans were making plans to relocate in the near future out of frustration.

With all of that in mind, you’d think the city would make good use of its resources by coming up with creative ways to combat the two issues that have become the most concerning to its residents.

Unfortunately, that’s not what’s happening. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the city is prepared to blow $300,000 on fancy prototype trash cans (up to $20k each for 15 of them) because people weren’t crazy about the existing green ones:

San Francisco has long wanted to replace its universally loathed green trash receptacles seen on sidewalks all over the city. On Wednesday, a supervisors’ committee learned new prototypes will cost between $12,000 and $20,000 each.

“$20,000 a can is ridiculous,” Supervisor Matt Haney said.

Despite the high price tag, Haney agreed Wednesday — along with other committee members — to advance a proposal to design 15 trash can prototypes for a pilot program to the full board for a vote next Tuesday. Haney said he “reluctantly” agreed because he didn’t want to further delay replacing old trash cans since the Department of Public Works worked for three years on a new prototype.

[…]

The city will pay for the prototypes out of budget funds placed on reserve, but any new mass-produced cans would be paid for by trash rates.

The cans are designed to encourage recycling, prevent people from digging through them and leaving their messes on the sidewalk, and include sensors that supposedly alert the city when they’re close to getting full, according to other local reports.

Here’s what the cans, which the city worked with “industrial designers at the Institute for Creative Integration (ICI)” to come up with, look like:

San Francisco considers fixing garbage issue by adding new trash cans with costs up to $20K each https://t.co/Pir0Cpygh7

— ABC7 News (@abc7newsbayarea) July 22, 2021

Once the trash can prototype “winner” is decided (sometime on or after January 2022), it will cost the city between $2,000 and $4,000 per can to mass produce:

Very excited the BOS Budget Comm unanimously recommended releasing funds to pay for SF’s next generation of trash cans! These will help keep our city clean! https://t.co/4PSJMD7lBx With more than 3,000 cans on the street, the new design will cost $2,000-4,000 each.

— SF Public Works (@sfpublicworks) July 22, 2021

The green cans were around $1,800 to mass produce, according to the Chronicle.

To be fair, the city will be spending $1.1 billion over the next two years on the homeless crisis, but the optics here on the trash cans are just terrible and could have been avoided, quite frankly, if San Francisco’s priorities were truly in order. Because investing large amounts of “reserve” money on what amounts to a vanity trash can project when people are starving and sleeping on the streets is just not a good look at all.

On a related note, how on earth could it have taken three years to come up with trash can designs? Thoughts?

Flashback–>> Great News for L.A.’s Homeless Population: ‘Second Phase’ of City’s Plastic Straw Ban Now Underway