Beyond the $1 Million Bathroom: How to Evaluate a Controversial Public Project

What a $1 Million Public Restroom Taught Me About Civic Literacy

In 2025, the city of Bloomington, Minnesota, completed what is often described as a restroom renovation at Civic Plaza, the municipal complex that houses City Hall, the Bloomington Center for the Arts, and other public services. “Renovation,” however, understates the scope. The existing men’s and women’s restrooms were largely demolished and rebuilt as new, universally accessible public restroom facilities. The work involved architectural, structural, plumbing, mechanical, electrical, fire-protection, accessibility, and finish systems—not simply the replacement of toilets, sinks, and tile.

The project ultimately cost just over $1 million. That figure quickly became the focus of local criticism. Some residents described the project as an obvious example of government waste. Others questioned why federal COVID-relief funds were used for public restrooms. In some local social-media discussions, criticism went further, with allegations of fraud and corruption.

I did not know whether the project cost too much. I am not an engineer, architect, contractor, or public-procurement specialist, and I did not know enough about the scope of the work, the bidding process, the funding source, or the applicable building requirements to form a responsible opinion. So, I submitted a request under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act for the principal documents concerning the project.

The City responded within ten days, producing the bid tabulation, contractor submissions, construction agreement, amendments, change orders, and technical drawings. Those records made clear that the project had not been paid for with local property tax dollars, as many residents seemed to assume. Instead, a substantial portion of the cost had come from federal pandemic-relief money, under a program called the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). That raised a new question the first production hadn't answered: how and why ARPA money had ended up funding a restroom renovation. I therefore submitted a second request focused specifically on the project's ARPA funding. The City responded to that request within approximately two weeks. Together, the two productions included thirty-eight records and provided a detailed picture of how the project was funded, bid, constructed, and managed.

The records did not tell me whether I should support the project. They did something more useful. They changed the questions I thought citizens should ask before reaching a conclusion.

A Project Years in the Making

The Civic Plaza restroom project, however, did not begin with that federal funding. Bloomington had been discussing substantial improvements to the restrooms since approximately 2020, and the project appeared in the city’s capital improvement planning. It was delayed because of cost, not because the need had disappeared.

Civic Plaza had opened in 2003, and by the time construction began, the first-floor restrooms had been in heavy public use for more than two decades. They served city employees, residents seeking municipal services, visitors attending public meetings, and patrons of the Bloomington Center for the Arts. According to the city’s materials, the project was intended to address aging infrastructure, improve accessibility, create a more functional layout, and reduce lines during performances and other large events. The rebuilt area included eight individual-use restrooms, two ADA-compliant restrooms, an ADA-accessible family restroom with both adult and child changing tables, and a separate urinal room. The design also provided more privacy, greater flexibility for caregivers, and easier maintenance.

The funding picture for the project changed after Congress enacted the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) in 2021.

Following the Money

ARPA did many things, but the piece of it that matters here is a single program buried inside the law: the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund. Through that fund, the federal government sent a direct, one-time payment to essentially every state, county, and city in the country, sized roughly to that government's population and need. Bloomington's share came to approximately $11.4 million. Congress created the fund, but the U.S. Department of the Treasury wrote the detailed rules governing what local governments could actually spend that money on — and those rules turned out to matter a great deal to this project.

One of Treasury's most important categories was called "Revenue Replacement." Treasury recognized that many state and local governments had collected less revenue during the pandemic as economic activity slowed and ordinary government operations were disrupted. To account for that, it created a formula for estimating each government's qualifying revenue loss.

Applying that formula, Bloomington calculated approximately $22 million in pandemic-related revenue loss — a figure worth pausing on, because it's easy to misread. It was not an additional federal award, and it did not mean the City received $22 million from Treasury. Bloomington's total ARPA allocation remained approximately $11.4 million throughout. What the larger number did was make the City's entire ARPA allocation eligible for the Revenue Replacement category, since the calculated loss exceeded the award itself.

Revenue Replacement funds could then be used for "government services," a category Treasury interpreted broadly. Bloomington did not place its entire $11.4 million allocation there. According to the City, approximately $6.65 million went toward government services affected by pandemic-related revenue loss — including police, fire, the Civic Plaza roof, and the restroom project — while the remainder supported public-health response and water-infrastructure work.

Of that $6.65 million, the City allocated $629,257.20 specifically to the restroom project. The project qualified because Treasury gave recipients broad discretion to use Revenue Replacement funds for forward-looking government-service costs incurred after March 3, 2021. The records reviewed so far do not clearly identify the funding source for the portion of the project cost above the ARPA allocation. The city has stated, however, that Bloomington property taxes were not used to pay for the restroom reconstruction.

Together, these records answered an important legal question: why the project was eligible for ARPA funding in the first place. Congress had not appropriated money specifically for public bathrooms. Treasury had given qualifying local governments broad discretion to use Revenue Replacement funds for government services, and Bloomington concluded that a restroom renovation fell within that category.

That answer, however, did not resolve the larger policy disputes sitting underneath it. Whether Congress should have created a relief program of that size, whether Treasury should have interpreted Revenue Replacement so broadly, and whether Bloomington should have chosen this particular project remain separate questions  involving different levels of government and different kinds of judgment.

Different Governments, Different Decisions

As I worked through the records, one realization kept returning to me. The public debate surrounding the restroom project was not really one debate at all. It was several different debates taking place simultaneously, often without people realizing they were talking about entirely different questions. That matters because different questions require different evidence.

Someone may believe Congress never should have enacted such a large COVID-relief program. That is a perfectly legitimate political position, but it is fundamentally a criticism of Congress and federal fiscal policy. Another person may accept Congress's decision yet believe the Treasury Department interpreted the law too broadly by allowing Revenue Replacement funds to be used for ordinary government services. That criticism is directed at Treasury's regulations rather than Bloomington.

A third person may agree with both of those federal decisions but believe Bloomington should have selected a different project. That is a local policy judgment. Finally, someone may believe the City mishandled the procurement process or spent more than necessary. That is a question about governance and administration.

Those are four very different questions.

One of the most valuable lessons I learned from reviewing the records is that public documents answer some of those questions extremely well while saying very little about others. The records clearly explain why the project qualified for ARPA funding, how the City awarded the construction contract, and how the project was administered. They cannot tell us whether Congress made the right decision, whether Treasury exercised good judgment, or whether Bloomington selected the project that best reflected the community's priorities. Those are ultimately questions of public policy, and reasonable people examining the same facts may reach different conclusions.

Recognizing that distinction changed the way I approached the entire project. Instead of asking whether I agreed with the decision, I became much more interested in understanding how the decision had been made.

Policy Is Not the Same as Process

One of the easiest mistakes to make in evaluating government is confusing disagreement over policy with evidence that government acted improperly.

Every budget reflects choices among competing priorities. A city can renovate a public building, repair streets, improve parks, expand library services, hire additional police officers, or reduce debt. But it cannot do everything at once. Citizens will inevitably disagree about those priorities, and that disagreement is healthy. It is one of the defining characteristics of representative government.

Those disagreements, however, are fundamentally different from asking whether public officials followed the law and their own procedures in carrying out those decisions.

Suppose a city decides to build a new community center, as is taking place right now in Bloomington. Some residents may think the money should have been spent on roads. Others may believe the existing building was perfectly adequate. Still others may argue that taxes should have been reduced instead. Those are all legitimate policy positions. But if the city debated the proposal publicly, approved it in open meetings, complied with procurement laws, competitively bid the work, documented the contracts, and spent the money according to those contracts, the decision-making process itself may have been entirely proper even if many residents oppose the project.

As I worked through Bloomington's records, I realized that whether I personally supported the project was beside the point. The question that actually mattered was different: did the City follow a transparent and responsible process in reaching its decision? The two are related, but they are not the same. And it's the second one that public records can actually answer.

What the Procurement Documents Show

The procurement records answered that governance question surprisingly well.

Bloomington received ten competitive bids for the project. The contract was awarded to Dering Pierson Group, the lowest responsible bidder, at approximately $896,000. The second-lowest bid differed by only about $1,300, while the remaining bids generally clustered within the same broad range. That pattern is significant because it suggests that multiple independent contractors, reviewing the same drawings and specifications, arrived at remarkably similar estimates of what the work would cost.

The phrase lowest responsible bidder also deserves some explanation. In public contracting, responsibility means more than offering the lowest price. Contractors must demonstrate that they possess the experience, financial capacity, licensing, bonding, insurance, and qualifications necessary to perform the work according to the project's specifications. Public entities are generally expected to award contracts to the lowest bidder who also satisfies those requirements, balancing fiscal responsibility with the need to ensure competent performance.

The records also documented a structured procurement process, including the engineer's estimate, bid tabulations, contract documents, amendments, and detailed change orders explaining why additional work became necessary — unforeseen conditions, plumbing and mechanical revisions, structural coordination, after-hours work, and schedule adjustments. Whether every design decision was optimal remains open to debate, but the records themselves show a recognizable and transparent public procurement process rather than an arbitrary series of expenditures.

What the Bids Can—and Cannot—Tell Us

One of the more interesting discoveries was what the competitive bids actually tell us.

The competitive bids also suggest something about the price itself. They do not prove that the project was inexpensive, and they do not prove Bloomington made the right decision in choosing to undertake it. What they suggest is that the market valued the work within a relatively narrow range: independent contractors, examining the same plans and estimating the same labor, materials, and risks, arrived at broadly similar prices. If someone believes the City should have built a smaller project, omitted certain features, or postponed the work entirely, that is a legitimate policy argument, but it is different from claiming that Bloomington dramatically overpaid for the project it actually chose to build.

Looking Beyond the Price Tag

By the time I finished reviewing the records, I found myself asking a question that had never occurred to me at the beginning of my investigation. Perhaps the real issue was not why this particular project cost approximately one million dollars. Perhaps the more interesting question was why modern public construction projects cost so much in the first place. That question turned out to be much more complicated than I had expected. That question reaches far beyond Bloomington.

The phrase " bathroom renovation" evokes the image of replacing toilets, sinks, and tile. The records describe something entirely different. This project involved demolition and reconstruction, architectural redesign, structural work, plumbing, HVAC systems, electrical work, fire protection, accessibility improvements, and extensive coordination among multiple engineering disciplines. It was performed inside an occupied public building that remained open throughout construction. Whether one agrees with the project or not, the documents make clear that the city purchased far more than new restroom fixtures.

The records also reminded me that our expectations of public buildings have changed dramatically over time. A public restroom built in the 1950s, the 1970s, or even the early 2000s was designed under a very different set of assumptions. Today we expect public facilities to comply with modern building, plumbing, electrical, fire, and accessibility codes. We expect them to be energy efficient, durable, hygienic, easy to maintain, and accessible to people with disabilities. Features such as automatic doors, touchless fixtures, improved ventilation, family restrooms, and accessible facilities have gradually become part of what many communities expect from new public construction.

Each of those expectations reflects a policy decision. Each also carries a cost.

That does not mean every requirement is necessarily justified or that every feature represents the best use of public money. Those are legitimate questions that citizens should continue to ask. But the conversation changes once we recognize what we are actually comparing. The choice is rarely between spending one million dollars or spending nothing. More often, it is between constructing a facility that satisfies today's legal requirements and community expectations or accepting a different set of standards altogether.

Accessibility Is a Policy Choice

One feature that attracted particular attention during the public discussion was the inclusion of an adult changing station. Some people questioned whether such a feature belonged in a municipal building or whether it justified its additional cost.

That reaction caused me to think about accessibility more broadly. Many of the accessibility features we now consider ordinary were once controversial. Wheelchair ramps, elevators, accessible parking spaces, curb cuts, automatic doors, wider restroom stalls, and accessible drinking fountains all require communities to spend additional money to make public spaces available to people who previously faced barriers to using them. Today most of us accept those features as ordinary parts of public life, even if we personally never use them.

An adult changing station raises the same underlying question. It serves a relatively small portion of the population, but for those individuals and their families, it can determine whether a public building is genuinely usable. Reasonable people may disagree about whether every public facility should include one or whether the cost is justified. Those are policy judgments. They deserve thoughtful discussion because they involve competing values and competing priorities. What they are not is evidence that someone acted improperly.

Expensive Is Not the Same as Corrupt

A project can be expensive, even needlessly so in some people's view, without being corrupt. And that distinction matters especially when it comes to the accusations of fraud and corruption that surfaced during the public debate.

As an attorney, I pay close attention to words because words carry consequences. Fraud and corruption are not simply rhetorical stand-ins for projects we dislike. They describe specific forms of misconduct. Fraud generally involves intentional deception for financial or personal gain. Corruption generally involves the abuse of public office for private benefit through conduct such as bribery, kickbacks, self-dealing, bid rigging, or undisclosed conflicts of interest. Those are serious allegations, and they require serious evidence.

It's also worth being honest about what routine procurement records can and can't show. Bribery, kickbacks, or an undisclosed side arrangement wouldn't appear in a bid tabulation. That kind of misconduct is concealed by design, and it typically surfaces through audits, whistleblowers, or subpoenaed records, not through the documents a city produces in response to a data-practices request. So the absence of evidence here doesn't prove fraud or corruption didn't happen; it means only that these particular records don't show it.

What the records do rule out is something narrower, but still meaningful: that the bidding process itself was skipped, avoided, or steered toward a favored contractor. Ten independent bids came in within a tight range, the contract went to the lowest responsible bidder through a documented process, every change order was written down, and City Council approved the project in open meetings. The city also responded promptly and professionally to two Data Practices Act requests, producing the documents necessary to evaluate the project independently rather than simply asking residents to trust its conclusions. None of that is proof of clean hands. It is evidence against a specific, checkable claim: that the bidding process itself was rigged.

None of that means the project was necessarily the best use of public funds. A person may still believe Bloomington should have delayed it, built something smaller, or directed the money elsewhere. Those remain legitimate policy disagreements. What the records do suggest is that disagreement over priorities should not automatically become accusations of fraud or corruption. If we reserve those terms for situations where evidence actually supports them, they retain their meaning. If we apply them to every public project we dislike, they quickly become little more than political slogans.

What Public Records Can—and Cannot—Tell Us

Perhaps the most important lesson I learned from this project has nothing to do with bathrooms. It concerns the role of public records in a democracy.

The documents answered many of the questions I originally had. They explained why the project qualified for ARPA funding, how Treasury's Revenue Replacement rules operated, how Bloomington awarded the construction contract, why the bids clustered so closely together, and what work the project actually included.

They could not answer whether Congress should have enacted the American Rescue Plan Act. They could not answer whether Treasury struck the right balance between flexibility and accountability. They could not answer whether Bloomington selected the project that best reflected the community's priorities. Nor should we expect them to.

Public records are exceptionally good at documenting legality, procedure, and transparency. They are much less capable of resolving questions of political judgment. Those questions belong to citizens, elected officials, and ultimately the ballot box. Understanding that distinction changed the way I think about government. I no longer expect documents to tell me what opinion I should hold. I expect them to provide the evidence necessary to form one responsibly.

A Better Way to Think About Government

This article ultimately is not about restrooms. The same questions could be asked about a community center, a library, a park, a police station, a housing project, or a major transportation investment. Every significant public project involves multiple levels of government, legal requirements, engineering decisions, procurement rules, budget priorities, and competing ideas about what communities should value.

When we collapse all of those decisions into the phrase "government wasted money," we lose much of what makes democratic accountability possible. We stop asking who made which decision, under what authority, and according to what evidence.

The Bloomington restroom project reminded me that good citizenship begins with curiosity rather than certainty. Healthy skepticism is one of democracy's greatest strengths, but skepticism should lead us to investigate before reaching conclusions. Citizens should request public records, attend public meetings, ask difficult questions, and hold elected officials accountable. They should also be willing to revise their assumptions when the evidence points in a different direction. That, more than anything else, is what this project taught me.

The next time I encounter a headline announcing that government has spent an astonishing amount of money on a public project, I hope my first reaction will no longer be to decide immediately whether I approve. Instead, I hope I begin with a different set of questions.

What exactly was built?

Who made the decision?

What law authorized it?

What do the public records show?

Only after answering those questions will I decide what I think. To me, that is what informed citizenship looks like.

By Karen Lundquist (LWV of Bloomington member)