Santa Cruz takes look at public bathrooms problem

Feces, clogged toilets and syringes are among the problems public bathrooms in Santa Cruz face on a daily basis, according to the city staff at a Tuesday night council meeting.

The city’s parks and recreation department says in a two-week period this month, staff have spent over 340 hours cleaning public bathrooms in the city, including 18 encounters with blood, 35 clogged toilets and 66 instances requiring the removal of graffiti.

These are part of the 226 issues staff have had to deal with in the two-week canvassing period in August alone.

Many of the problems happen at the Louden Nelson Community Center on Center Street.

“There were a number of years, a number of years of different challenges, activities, issues going on in the restrooms at Louden Nelson from vandalism to illegal or unlawful behavior,” said Tony Elliot, the director of the Santa Cruz Parks and Recreation Department.

The city says Louden Nelson restrooms are still open to the public, but they have been on a restricted access basis since early 2018.

All pother public restrooms in the city are still open, including at the city’s various parks, which have also seen their share of blood, syringes and feces.

At Louden Nelson, Elliot says, “Staff took a variety of steps and tactics to try and address these issues, try to help the people using the bathrooms, all the way to having an attendant at the restrooms to watch over the restrooms and help people.”

The city council is considering whether to keep the rules as they are at Louden Nelson and whether to give the parks and recreation department more authority over park open hours.

But some advocates fear the city will close park bathrooms, hurting the homeless.

“I think my main concern is if those are in fact public restrooms and they’re funded by public dollars, then they should be opened to all of the public,” said Kayla Kumar, a Santa Cruz resident.

The city says they intend to keep park bathrooms open to the public for the public’s benefit.

City staff also came back with an estimate of how much it would cost to have a bathroom attendant at every public restroom in the city. That number came out to about $2 million.