When electronic card access locks are installed at the Port of Port Townsend’s bathroom and shower building this fall, homeless and off-the-grid people who use those facilities may find themselves in the lurch.

The new locks are planned to be installed, along with a $58,191 renovation of the bathroom/shower facility, in order to better serve the port’s customers.

Port Commissioner Steve Tucker wants to make sure that homeless and off-the-grid folks have some way to stay clean and heed the call of Mother Nature.

“Everyone’s talking about bathrooms,” Tucker said at an April 26 commission meeting. It’s a problem not unique to the port, he said, as Jefferson Transit, the city, the county and even local businesses are all currently affected by the bathroom issue one way or another.

“So it was suggested that we could get together and figure it out and have a ‘bathroom summit’ at some point,” Tucker said.

“There’s a lot of people that need to get together and talk about sharing the responsibilities for bathrooms.”

One sign of the bathroom and shower problem is – literally – a sign: a green-and-white sign located not far from the Haines Place Park and Ride. It reads in capital letters:

“RESTROOMS LOCATED AT McDONALD’S AND SAFEWAY.”

“I think that’s such a cop-out,” Tucker said of the sign, because it puts the public bathroom burden on private businesses.

‘NOT THOUGHT OUT’

Oddly enough, there’s a proper public bathroom facility located just a few yards away from that sign, at the southwest corner of Kah Tai Lagoon Nature Park. Tucker said it had “wonderful” stainless steel vandal-resistant fixtures inside, but the building is closed to the public.

A brown plastic-sided port-a-potty sits just outside the facility. There’s another port-a-potty nearby at the Haines Place Park and Ride.

“Basically what’s happening is the city is paying for a port-a-potty … the one by the closed-up bathrooms. [Jefferson] Transit is paying for a port-a-potty that may not be able to stay there. Pedestrians are being told to go to McDonald’s and Safeway, and it’s just not thought out,” Tucker said.

“I keep saying that someone needs to actually think about a comprehensive hygiene plan, and, to me, that seems to fall in the county’s lap because, you know, Port Townsend, even though it’s a city, is still in the county, and so the county has a … Department of Social and Health Services, and I would think ‘sanitation’ would fall under both ‘social’ and ‘health.’

“And the reason I’m bringing it up is because it’s not anywhere at all in the port’s plan to be responsible for hygiene for the residents of the city and the county,” Tucker said. “We deal with the port and the people that live in the Boat Haven … to keep those facilities working good, we’re going to have it so that you have to have a card lock to get in there.

“So, I’m trying to get this conversation started early because bathroom renovation is going to happen, and then, this fall, they’re going to be locked,” Tucker added.

“And so I would think that it would be incumbent upon the county or the city or transit or, you know, all of us together, to say, ‘We have a problem here and we need to put our heads together and fix it.’”

BUILT IN 1980s

The port’s bathroom/shower building was built in the mid-1980s. The port estimates that 53,000 showers are taken at the facility every year. The building’s exhaust fans cannot effectively remove all the moisture from the building, which causes issues with mold.

“It gets used a huge amount; way more than it was designed to,” Tucker said.

The port plans to renovate the building this fall at a cost of $58,191. The facility is set to get a new roof, doors, windows, new shower and bathroom fixtures, new lighting and an improved ventilation system.

The facility is used not only by the homeless but also people who are living off the grid. Tucker noted that, for example, some people might join a gym not to work out, but just to have access to the showers.

“Well, a lot of people don’t join gyms; they’ll just use the showers at the port.”

THE ‘PHANTOM CRAPPER’

Tucker said the port’s bathroom/shower facility has had occasional problems with vandalism.

“There was a bit of vandalism that happened a few years ago where it was really disgusting … people were taking feces and writing on the walls and stuff like that. It was pretty horrible.”

One port employee referred to the offender as the “phantom crapper.”

Tucker said that another time he went into the shower/restroom facility and saw someone using paper towels to towel themselves off, “taking all the paper towels and leaving a big old wad of them there.”

Jefferson Transit has also had its share of vandalism problems.

Tammi Rubert, general manager for Jefferson Transit, said someone once vandalized the port-a-potty at the Haines Place Park and Ride.

“We did have a small fire in one of the port-a-potties. Yeah, that happened,” Rubert said.

“They stuffed newspaper, paper towels or something outside of the [port-a-potty] wall and they set it on fire … melted the wall.”

An insurance claim was filed, and the unit was replaced.

Another problem, she said, was that people would drop needles and garbage into the toilets.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

Tucker suggested that the showers at the YMCA at Mountain View could be used instead of the port’s showers.

“And that, I think, is a wonderful idea because [the YMCA is] staffed. It’s got people that can take care of stuff that would go on, and it would be locked at a certain time and it would be cleaned and so on, so I think that’s a great idea.

“I think it’s kind of incumbent upon all of us together to figure out who’s going to be the hygiene center and fund it.”

Port showers cost about 50 cents, and YMCA showers cost $3, so affordability is an issue.

As for public restrooms, the Kah Tai restroom could use some work were it to be reopened. Graffiti is scrawled on the exterior of the building. The doors have the handles removed and are sealed shut. To reach the bathroom, one must walk through a small forest along a gravel trail. Tucker suggested that the walkway could be improved by adding a concrete sidewalk and some lighting.

The trees and foliage in the vicinity had been trimmed.

“It used to just be a thicket, just a jungle,” Tucker said.

ELECTRONIC LOCKS

Visiting boater Michael Crisler has used the port’s restroom/shower. He had his boat docked at the Boat Haven last week.

“There are definitely people that don’t seem to have marine business there,” Crisler said. Crisler said he hasn’t had any problems, but wouldn’t leave his personal items unattended while using the facility.

“I’m not going to do the laundry up there and leave it,” he said.

He tried that once, at the Bremerton Marina. His laundry was stolen.

“That J.Crew thermal that I loved was in there,” Crisler said, his voice trailing off as he fondly recalled the garment.

Crisler was skeptical about an electronic key card access system making a difference. He had used an electronic fob system while visiting the Bremerton Marina. He said it was common for people to be courteous and hold the door open for people coming in behind them, defeating the electronic locks. He couldn’t judge someone based on how disheveled they may appear.

“Look at us. We don’t look like we live anywhere most of the time,” Crisler said of his slightly scruffy mariner look.

Still, a system need not be 100 percent effective to be useful. So an electronic lock system could still be helpful.

Miranda Larrin, marine office assistant at the Bremerton Marina, said tenants there are given fobs for facilities access and guest boaters are given a key code that was changes weekly.

Still, she said, they did have unauthorized people follow authorized people inside the facilities. She said they sent letters to tenants to remind them of the rules.

“We can’t stop everything, but it does help a lot,” she said of the electronic locks.