The Government Waste Hall of Fame: $20K Trash Cans, Cocaine Rat Studies, and Why Your Appraisal Matters

You pay your property taxes every year. Thousands of dollars, right out of your pocket. But have you ever stopped to wonder what actually happens to that money?

Texas homeowners contributed $125.05 billion in property taxes in 2024 alone (Texas Comptroller). California added another $97.9 billion (California Board of Equalization, 2024). That's serious money. And some of it went to genuinely important things: schools, roads, fire departments.

Some of it, though? Some of it went to $20,000 trash cans, million-dollar park toilets, and a study about whether lonely rats prefer cocaine. We're not making this up. Every example in this post is real, sourced, and paid for with your tax dollars.

Key Takeaways

• Government waste is real, sourced, and funded by property taxes
• 30-60% of homes are over-assessed, meaning most owners overpay (National Taxpayers Union)
• Only ~5% of homeowners protest, but success rates hit 80-91%
• Protesting your appraisal is the one spending lever you control

Welcome to the Government Waste Hall of Fame

U.S. taxpayers lost at least $382 million to fraudulent unemployment payments sent to people with birthdates listed in the future, some of whom were supposedly 115 years old (GAO, 2024). That's not a typo. And it barely scratches the surface of where your tax dollars end up. Here's a guided tour through the finest exhibits.

The Trash Can Pavilion

San Francisco spent $537,000 testing trash can prototypes. The result? A single design costing $20,900 per unit. The city then awarded a $10 million contract to the only qualified bidder (Reason, 2024). That's not competitive bidding. That's writing a blank check.

And San Francisco is not alone. Baltimore spent $9 million on "smart" garbage cans equipped with sensors and solar-powered compactors (Goldwater Institute, 2024). How smart can a garbage can really be?

When you compare the per-unit cost of San Francisco's trash cans to the median price of a used car in America (about $27,000), you realize a city trash can now costs roughly 77% of what a Honda Civic costs.

The Toilet Wing

New York City spent $5.3 million to build five public restrooms in city parks. That's $1.06 million per toilet (Goldwater Institute, 2024). For context, you could build an entire house in most of America for that price.

Some bathrooms exceeded $2-3M each.

Washington, D.C spent $416,789 maintaining a self-cleaning public toilet that hadn't actually worked in over two years (Senate HSGAC, 2024). They paid nearly half a million dollars to maintain something that was broken. Nobody thought to check.

And then there's the governor who went in the other direction. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker removed five toilets from his Chicago mansion so the county would classify it as "uninhabitable," reducing his property tax bill by $330,000 (NPR, 2019; Cook County Inspector General). When the people making the rules know how to game the system, what does that tell the rest of us?

The "Creative Spending" Gallery

The National Endowment for the Arts spent $365,000 promoting circuses in city parks (NEA / Festivus Report, 2024). Meanwhile, the California Employment Development Department paid $4.6 million for over 6,200 mobile devices that nobody used for more than four years (California State Auditor, 2024). Thousands of phones and tablets, collecting dust in a warehouse.

Illinois state agencies spent taxpayer money on beer koozies, bottle openers, and golf outings (Illinois Policy, 2024). Not for a charity event. Not for a public program. Just because they could. Illinois counties waste deserves a list of their own so we'll throw in some favorites here:

Pork project spending, which goes entirely to districts represented by state lawmakers who voted for the budget, includes:

• $10 million to rehabilitate the dilapidated and privately owned Uptown Theatre in Chicago
• $3.3 million to build a sports recreation facility in Chicago’s Morgan Park neighborhood
• $2.5 million to renovate greenhouses at Southern Illinois University
• $2 million for a racetrack in Madison County
• Nearly $1.4 million for improvements to Senka Park in Chicago
• $350,000 to Memorial Park District in Hillside to renovate a swimming pool
• $350,000 for a bike path, potentially in addition to other unspecified capital improvements, in the village of Romeoville
• $275,000 for a running track at Jesse Owens Park in Chicago
• $200,000 for renovations to a community swimming pool in the Chatham neighborhood of Chicago
• $100,000 for capital improvements in the Park District of Oak Park, including a new water playground
• $30,000 to build a water park in the city of Harvey

Source: IllinoisPolicy.org

The pattern across all these examples isn't left vs. right. It's accountability vs. none. Local governments rarely face competitive pressure. There's no "going out of business." When there's no market consequence for waste, budgets grow regardless of results.

Why Does Government Waste Matter to Your Property Tax Bill?

Property taxes are the single largest source of local government revenue in the United States. In Texas, collections hit $125.05 billion in 2024 (Texas Comptroller). Your appraised value directly determines how much of that total comes from your wallet. When spending balloons, your share grows with it.

Consider Austin. The city's budget jumped from $4.63 billion in 2020 to $7.57 billion in 2024, a 63% increase in just four years (Foundation for Government Accountability, 2024). Population growth doesn't explain a 63% budget increase. Where did the extra billions go?

Or take La Marque, Texas. The city was down to $1.2 million in cash against a $20 million annual budget. One city official compared it to "being on the Titanic" (Governing.com). When a local government burns through its reserves, guess who gets asked to refill the tank? You do, through higher appraisals and higher tax rates.

This isn't abstract. Every dollar of waste is a dollar that came from someone's property tax bill, income tax return, or sales tax receipt. And at the local level, property taxes carry the heaviest load.

In working with thousands of Texas homeowners, we've found that most people assume their appraisal is accurate. They pay the bill without question. But when you look at the comps, you'll often find the appraisal district valued their home 10-20% above recent comparable sales. That gap isn't just a rounding error. It's real money flowing into budgets with limited oversight.

How Many Homeowners Are Actually Over-Assessed?

The National Taxpayers Union estimates that 30-60% of all properties in the U.S. are over-assessed. Yet only about 5% of homeowners ever protest or appeal their appraisal. That gap is staggering. It means most people are paying more than they should, year after year, into a system that spends the way we've just described.

Let's do some quick math. The average Texas homeowner pays $4,500+ per year in property taxes. If your home is over-assessed by just 10%, that's roughly $450 per year you're overpaying. Over five years? That's $2,250. Over a decade? $4,500, enough to buy a San Francisco trash can.

And the odds of winning are better than most people think. When homeowners show up with comparable sales data, the success rate is 80-91% (Gill Denson). You read that right. The vast majority of people who protest with evidence get a reduction. So why aren't more people doing this?

Most homeowners don't protest because they assume the appraisal district got it right. Or they think the process is too complicated. Or they just don't know they can. But the data tells a different story. Your appraisal is a starting offer, not a final answer.

What Can You Actually Do About Your Property Taxes?

You can't vote on San Francisco's trash can budget. You can't defund the cocaine rat study. But you can protest your property tax appraisal, and that's the one real spending lever available to individual homeowners. In Texas, homeowners who protested with evidence won reductions 80-91% of the time (Gill Denson).

Step 1: Know Your Appraisal

Check your appraised value on your county's appraisal district website. Compare it to what similar homes in your neighborhood have actually sold for. If your appraisal is higher than recent sales, you likely have grounds to protest.

Step 2: File Before the Deadline

In Texas, the deadline is typically May 15 (or 30 days after your Notice of Appraised Value is mailed). Miss it, and you wait another year. California homeowners can file an appeal with their county assessment appeals board, with deadlines varying by county, usually between September and November.

Step 3: Bring the Evidence

Comparable sales are your best weapon. Pull 3-5 recent sales of similar homes within a mile of yours. Note any condition issues, like foundation problems or outdated systems, that would lower your home's value. Photos help. Repair estimates help more.

Step 4: Show Up (or Have Someone Show Up for You)

In Texas, you can attend an informal hearing at the appraisal district. Most reductions happen at this stage. If that doesn't work, you can escalate to a formal hearing before the Appraisal Review Board. In California, the appeals board process is more formal, but the principle is the same: present your evidence and make your case.

Don't forget to check whether you're claiming your homestead exemption. In Texas, this alone can reduce your taxable value by at least $100,000 for your primary residence. It's free. It takes five minutes. And a surprising number of homeowners haven't filed for it.

You Can't Stop the Waste, But You Can Stop Overpaying

Here's the uncomfortable truth. You can't cancel a $549,000 cat treadmill study. You can't return Baltimore's $9 million garbage cans. You can't un-remove J.B. Pritzker's toilets. The spending has happened, and more of it is coming.

But you can make sure your property tax bill reflects what your home is actually worth. Not what the appraisal district guesses it's worth. Not what the county wishes it was worth to fill budget gaps. What it's actually worth, based on real sales data.

With 30-60% of homes over-assessed and success rates above 80% for those who protest, the math is clear. If you've never protested your appraisal, you're almost certainly leaving money on the table.

You can't control how government spends your tax dollars. But you can control how many of those dollars you send. Start your protest today and make sure you're not overpaying for the circus, literally.