While the city struggles to fill potholes and keep escalators running at BART stations, a group of San Francisco volunteers is quietly doing what bureaucracies can't seem to manage: actually maintaining public land.

Volunteers have been putting in the work to restore lost trails and habitat at Laguna Honda, the green space nestled in the city's geographic center that most San Franciscans have either forgotten about or never knew existed. The effort involves clearing overgrown paths, removing invasive species, and making the area accessible and enjoyable again — all without a multi-million dollar budget line item or a five-year environmental review process.

Let that sink in for a moment. Ordinary people, giving up their weekends, are accomplishing what San Francisco's parks and public works apparatus — with its billion-dollar-plus combined budgets — hasn't prioritized. It's a small story, but it tells you everything about how this city actually functions.

San Francisco spends more per capita on government than virtually any city in America. And yet time and again, it's volunteer-driven efforts that fill the gaps. Whether it's neighborhood clean-ups, mutual aid networks, or trail restoration projects like this one, residents keep stepping up because they've learned the hard way that waiting on City Hall means waiting forever.

None of this is to say we shouldn't have a functioning parks department. We absolutely should — and we pay handsomely for one. But when volunteers are doing restoration work that the city should have been managing all along, it raises a fair question: where exactly is all that money going?

The Laguna Honda volunteers deserve recognition not just for their sweat equity, but for the example they set. This is what community stewardship looks like when people stop waiting for permission and start taking ownership of their shared spaces. More of this, please — and maybe a hard look at why it was necessary in the first place.