Except I had a custom one made by a company that does them for cities for my FIL's farm and it was less than $30 including the pole and mounting hardware.
This article says even less but the labor is what costs.
https://www2.ljworld.com/news/2011/nov/13/city-hard-pressed-stop-sign-thefts/I get it don't steal them. Maybe they would put a label on them saying they would sell you your very own for $15 or get caught stealing this one and go to jail and pay a multi-hundred dollar fine. But the COCS public communications department could probably drive the cost of the label to more than the sign costs.
College Station inefficiencies run deep and they could replace every street sign daily for less than the pilfer away. I worry far more over things like $5M+ spent to buy and implement Cayenta's dispatch system at utilities and totally fail and then have to spend even more to sustain the legacy system.
If COCS was a business they would be out of business. But they are not a business they have a knob to turn to facilitate unwise spending, its called the tax rate. They also have their back channel to wispier in the the appraisal districts ear about they really think property in CS is worth more this year.
We need to be more worried about issues like did the mayor's travel and fuel expenses get reimbursed by the tax payers for his frequent travel to Austin to lobby how bad it would be if city tax rates would be further limited.