A Tiny Township myth recently became reality for one council member.
"Given the pandemic we've seen a surge of people at our beaches," said Deputy Mayor Steffen Walma. "I've witnessed someone actually defecating off the side of a trail on Concession 6, just this past weekend. Never thought it would happen, but apparently it isn't a myth."
The comment came up at council's recent committee of the whole meeting after Mayor George Cornell questioned why the municipality doesn't have a policy around placement of porta-potties.
He brought it up after becoming aware of problems arising from a porta-potty placed at the end of Chemin du Loup.
"It seems we may have gotten ourselves in the middle of a bit of a neighbour dispute," he said. "I'd like to put forward that the one we put at the bottom of Chemin du Loup be removed and that staff investigate guidelines and policy around where and when porta-potties are placed around the township."
Cornell noted that the request had been made once before when a similar situation had arisen around the portable washroom placed at Huronia Court.
"I believe our direction was to staff to give some thought to guidelines and policy so we can prevent these situations from happening or at least have the basis for putting porta-potties in," he said.
Engineering manager Jean-Francois Robitaille provided an explanation for why the specific porta-potty was placed at Chemin du Loup.
"This came up as a local resident who lives down there saying that members of the public were using bushes as washrooms," he said. "That's why they wanted a porta-potty there. We have received positive feedback on it, so it's not all negative, some people are happy with it."
Despite understanding why staff had made the decision to do so, Coun. Tony Mintoff said he would support the removal of the specific porta-potty and the preparation of a policy going forward.
"I'd like to think we don't just put a porta-potty in place because one or two people ask us for it," he said. "I think we should go through a rationalization process."
With that, Mintoff brought up a motion from last year that says in part that staff be directed to develop a set of criteria for the type and placement of a portable washrooms and garbage cans on public property and bring a report back to council.
"We have 140 public-access points leading to beaches and all different sizes and configurations," he said. "I think it would help us in future when we're determining where and when or if we should be placing there any kind of amenities like garbage cans or porta-potties."
Cornell also wanted to know if the public washrooms were open and accessible to beach users.
"The public washrooms are still closed at this time," said Robitaille. "Staff is working on procedure for properly cleaning them that our maintenance staff feels comfortable with, given the amount of people coming through. We're keeping up and increased number of porta-potties at our major beach parks and proceeding with that at this time."
A second matter Cornell brought forward at the meeting was for staff to look into placing buoys to mark off swimming areas at public beaches.
"I know council has discussed this a number of times and I just wanted to get an update for council in terms of where we're at," he said.
Robitaille said staff would come back with a report on this for council at its next meeting.
"With regards to the buoys, we had looked at that last year," he said, "but (they were) more for enforcement of the special speed limit regulations that were put in place for a shoreline between Wasaga Beach and 16/17 Concession, where we have a special speed limit of 10k/hr within 300 metres of the shorline."
Typically, Robitaille said, it's only 30 metres from the shoreline that people have to follow the speed limit.
"In discussions with the OPP, just given the length of our shoreline, they're okay with us putting up signage at our major beach parks letting people know of this speed limit," he said. "Otherwise, it would be quite costly to put buoys all along our waterfront."
Robitaille said that the township had looked into placing buoys at Jackson's Park some 20 years ago.
"I know there were some buoys at Jackson's Park, more for dileneating where it was safe for boats to travel where there's at least two metres of water," he said. "There were some issues there with liability."
Cornell also wanted to know if the public washrooms were open and accessible to beach users.
"The public washrooms are still closed at this time," said Robitaille. "Staff is working on procedure for properly cleaning them that our maintenance staff feels comfortable with, given the amount of people coming through. We're keeping up and increased number of porta potties at our major beach parks and proceeding with that at this time."
