The following article appeared in the July 10 edition of the Guelph Tribune:
The task force set up to solve the problems of the city’s entertainment district has come up with a different plan for installing “pissoirs” as part of a three-pronged bid to fight public urination in the downtown. The new plan is modelled on what’s been done successfully in Edmonton for the past couple of years, said Coun. Ian Findlay, a member of the Downtown Nightlife Task Force.
Two pissoirs – each capable of accommodating four men at a time – would be set up along the “Macdonell Street corridor” in the heart of the bar district, he said after a meeting of the task force Wednesday. They would stay there around the clock every day during a pilot period, which could start in late August and go to the end of the year.
“There clearly is a need for public facilities in the downtown, and this would hopefully help to address that,” Findlay said in an interview.
City council will be asked to pay for the cost of buying two premanufactured plastic pissoirs similar to the ones used in Edmonton and for their operating costs during the pilot period, Findlay said.
These costs should be lower than an earlier proposal that went to council in June, partly because the pissoirs wouldn’t need to be removed once in place, he said. However, “we haven’t had a chance to crunch all the numbers” yet to come up with a cost.
City council balked in June at paying the bulk of the cost of a pilot project involving a pissoir that was to have been fabricated by city staff using a flatbed truck. It was to be wheeled into place near the corner of Wyndham and Macdonell streets on weekend bar nights and removed the rest of the time.
Findlay said the pissoirs now being proposed would also be a “better value,” because people could use them at any time of day. This includes the homeless, he noted.
The task force members plan to pay for a poster campaign in bar washrooms against public urination, and Guelph Police support a campaign of stricter enforcement of the city’s anti-fouling bylaw starting in September. However, Findlay said, it’s “unlikely” these two prongs of a campaign against public urination will happen “unless we have a choice for people” provided by the pissoirs.
The city takes in considerable revenue from the average of 150 tickets, each carrying a $240 fine, that are now being issued by police annually for violations of the antifouling bylaw, he said. He suggested the city could use some of this money to pay for “a solution to the problem.”
The pissoirs used in Edmonton have lattice work to provide some privacy for users, while not presenting the “health and safety issues” related to fully enclosed portable toilets that concern police, Findlay said.
He said he used one himself recently at noon in Edmonton. “It is entirely discreet, it is entirely civilized.”
Findlay said he spoke to merchants in Edmonton who’d been apprehensive about the pissoirs but who came to support them. They’ve been “hugely successful in diverting” large quantities of urine from the streets, he said.
The local task force has its eye on a couple of sites for installing pissoirs, but it’s not making them public yet.
“I think it’s safe to say we’re looking at the Macdonell Street corridor,” Findlay said. “But we want to talk to merchants and residents in the area before they read about it in the paper.”
The new plan for pissoirs goes to a July 20 meeting of council’s emergency services, community services and operations committee.
Jennifer Mackie, executive director of the Downtown Guelph Business Association, said the city has plans to put public washrooms in a new parkade on Wilson Street and a new transit terminal on Carden Street, but something needs to be done in the meantime.
“It is not just a night-time problem,” although it is worse at night, she said.