By Pete McIntyre

Council approves 24-7 washroom on trial basis

Mar 25, 2020 | 5:15 AM

The public washroom in downtown Vernon will be open 24-hours a day on a three month trial basis.

The facility on 30th Ave. near the former downtown Safeway, is currently open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., and council has approved spending $24,000 for extra cleaning.

Council was originally looking at having two washrooms open 24-hours on a six-month trial basis, but scaled that back to one facility for three months.

“The RCMP have already told us it’s going to be a low priority, which means they’re never going to go there if there is complaints,” said Councillor Akbal Mund. “That means our bylaws [staff] will have to deal with it, but our bylaw are off at midnight, so nobody is going to deal with it from midnight to 6 a.m.”

Mayor Victor Cumming said it’s something that’s been on council’s “to do” list for a year and a half.

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“I’ll be voting in favour of this. I think it’s time to make the decision to move forward. We’ll get a report back from operations on how well this functions,” said Cumming.

Councillor Kari Gares said having a washroom open during the COVID crisis is “imperative,” but she had a problem with people using them to sleep in overnight.

“If we’re leaving these washrooms open but they’re being occupied in the middle of the night, what is the purpose of leaving them open?” she wondered.

Delivery of two new washrooms planned for the Transit Exchange on 31st Avenue have been delayed a few months by the manufacturer.

“The bases are down. We don’t have the washrooms yet, and with all that’s been going on in the last week, the manufacturer has not been able to supply those washrooms,” said Shirley Koenig, director of operations with the City of Vernon.

Koenig was succesful in getting council to agree to keeping the $24,000 budget which was originally for the six-moth trial period.

“The budget was based on what we were doing now without the COVID virus,” said Koenig.

Mayor Cumming noted lots of other communities are dealing with a similar issue.

“There are some mechanical and electronic mechanisms they are using to prevent long- term decay so there might be some things operations can look at in terms of what other communities have been able to do,” said Cumming.

by Pete McIntyre

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