Fa-la-la-la-loo
Metro Santa Cruz
Nuz reports:Ah, the holiday shopping season. Time to head downtown and spend the day shopping, eating and drinking—and holding it, unless you happen to be near Bookshop Santa Cruz, the only decent public restroom facility on the mall. It's tough to find a place to tinkle in this town. God help you should more serious business call.
It's an uncivilized state of affairs, in Nūz's view. But this time next year, public sanitation in Surf City could be much improved. After downtown merchants shot down the idea of a self-cleaning kiosk-style public restroom—nobody wanted what might have turned into a tiny little brothel or shooting gallery on the sidewalk in front of their business—city officials are taking a different approach and turning to the business owners themselves. Mark Dettle, director of public works for the city, explained to Nūz that the latest idea, modeled on a program in Santa Barbara and other cities, is to offer a stipend or a break on city fees to any business owner who opens up a loo to John Q. Public. Signs would point mallgoers to these facilities, which would presumably be more pleasant than the rank city-run public toilets in the Soquel and Locust street garages.
John Lischer, owner of Artisans gallery in downtown Santa Cruz and a member of several city committees on public restrooms, is a big advocate of community restrooms downtown. "You can see where it would curtail commerce," he says, not to have any facilities at all.
But Lischer is leery of asking individual business owners to take on the cost and hassle of providing what he thinks should be a public service. "I think the community has a responsibility to install public restrooms," he says. "They should be in the public domain, so everyone shares the cost." Lischer adds that public toilets take a beating. He points to Bookshop Santa Cruz, which he says "should be nominated for sainthood" for opening its restrooms to the public at great expense. (Nūz is inclined to agree.)
Vice-Mayor Ryan Coonerty, whose sister Sheila Coonerty now runs the family business, says between toilet paper, water, cleaning, visits by the plumber and vandalism, Bookshop Santa Cruz spends $40,000 to $50,000 a year keeping its restrooms open.
The city-run toilets also cost a pretty penny, says Dettle. People showering at the sink, stuffing things down the toilet, tearing out fixtures and worse all help boost the maintenance cost to $150,000 a year.
And still nobody wants to use them.
Will business owners want to sign up for this? Will people be shamed into good behavior if they have to traipse through somebody's shop to reach the can? Maybe. Nūz is pleased to learn that the city is not planning on relying solely on the stipend-for-privies plan, which is still in the exploratory phase. Coonerty says another part of the program is to start making sure establishments that serve food and drink—which are required to have restrooms—are making them available to their customers, if not the general public. And some sprucing up of the garage restrooms, possibly including video cameras outside to deter vandalism, is also on the list.
It's a subject that Coonerty, who officially becomes mayor this month, greets dutifully, if not joyously.
"For something that affects everybody, it's a tough problem to solve," he says, adding, "but I think we can make some progress on it."
Here is another example of the myopic mentality of government officials and local business.
This problem is an easy one to solve with a little creative thinking.
Problem: Downtown Santa Cruz needs toilets. Anytime the city or a private business opens a toilet to the public, the bums and other barbarians who can't function in a civilized society either destroy the toilets or make them unsanitary and unusable. Thank you, Bob Norse.
Solution: Choice 1: Do more of the same. Choice 2: Do nothing. Choice 3: Do something other than choice 1 or choice 2. Unfortunately, our city and business leaders are mentally and intellectually incapable of coming up with a solution other than 1 or 2. In other words, they are imbeciles, which is why Downtown Santa Cruz is the shit hole that it is.
My solution: You build public toilets on both ends of Pacific Ave, or wherever convenient. Now, you don't build toilets that look like they belong in provincial China, which is what the idiots on the city council and Downtown Association would do. Instead, you build beautiful restrooms. You build the best looking toilets that are possible.
Now, after doing that, you hire security guards and maids/janitors to take care of these toilets.
Some may say, "Whoa there cowboy, we can't afford to build big beautiful bathrooms in Santa Cruz. We just don't have the money. And we certainly don't have the cash to hire people to service them."
I think it is idiotic that Bookshop Santa Cruz spent $50,000 to maintain their toilets when they could have posted a security guard and janitor for half that cost. But, then again, the Connerty political legacy has been to run Santa Cruz into the ground, so it is not surprising that they can't run a business properly with common sense either.
So, here are a number of possibilities.
1. You charge to use the bathroom. This keeps the bums out. And you have somebody on premises to take the money. Don't use machines that the Mexicans will vandalize and steal. And if a bum pays to use the toilet and vandalizes it, the money taker can call the police and have the bum arrested.
2. You use people who have committed crimes and have been sentenced to do community service to clean and secure the toilets. Make them wear uniforms while performing these services.
3. If the city and Downtown Association don't want to use criminals for free labor, then they should split the cost of managing the restrooms.
See how easy that solution is? No committees, no hard work, no endless hand wringing. Simple, cost-effective solution.
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