Kingborough’s Mayor says it’s ‘not worth the risk’ to leave certain public toilets in the region open all night after a recent string of vandalism started to become ‘too expensive to fix’.
At a council meeting on Monday night, Mayor Paula Wriedt said the ‘final straw’ came when around $40,000 to $50,000 worth of damage was done to toilets at Blackmans Bay and Kingston Park in a short period of time.
“It’s not just people going in and graffitiing,” Mayor Wriedt said.
“We’re talking destroying whole cubicles, setting fire to things and making those facilities totally unusable.”
“Unfortunately the parenting rooms at Kingston Park Community Hub were totally destroyed some time ago and that took a substantial amount of time for us to repair.”
While surveillance systems have been installed around the toilets, Wriedt said the cameras “cannot prevent the vandalism being done at the time” but rather assist with catching the offenders afterwards.
“When we’re talking about the substantial amount of money that is being devoted from Council resources into having to have toilets out of action for a long period of time, but also then the money that’s going into paying for those works, [it is] very, very disappointing and ultimately a cost to the ratepayers.”
The Mayor says the toilets around the Kingborough area will have their hours altered in the coming weeks to “reflect the longer daylight hours” as we move into summer.
“It’s very unfortunate that we’ve had to take this step, but it’s not unlike the steps that other councils have taken around the state to close their toilets to prevent the vandalism.”
There are currently no plans to re-open the toilets on a 24-hour basis.
