Hailey city leaders are planning to build new public bathrooms in the city, despite problems with vandalism at some of the existing facilities.
Permanent bathrooms will be installed next summer at Roberta McKercher Park, at the southern entrance to Hailey, costing the city $47,000. City officials are hoping the new bathrooms will not be targeted by vandals and graffiti painters, who have turned the bathrooms at Hop Porter Park into an eyesore.
In the summer, Roberta McKercher Park is used for informal soccer games and family gatherings, as well as special events such as antiques fairs. In the fall, it hosts the annual Trailing of the Sheep Festival. Special-events applicants have had to rent temporary bathrooms for years.
During the winter, the nonprofit group Hailey Ice pays for "porta-potties" at McKercher Park to accommodate hockey games and ice skaters.
The prefabricated, cast-concrete bathrooms will face the RV dump station on the south side of the park.
Parks and Lands Board Project Coordinator Becki Keefer said the new bathrooms are almost identical to the ones at Keefer Park in Woodside and on the Fourth Street Heritage Corridor in Ketchum.
"They have been in use by the National Parks and Forest Service for many years and are virtually indestructible," Keefer said.
The installation of bathrooms at McKercher Park ranked high in a city survey of citizens earlier this year.
Yet some city officials are concerned that the new bathrooms will provide another opportunity for vandals to deface city property, as they have at Hop Porter Park across town.
In a discussion of the matter this week, City Councilman Fritz Haemmerle objected to spending money on the McKercher Park bathrooms, due to the condition of the restrooms at Hop Porter. The bathrooms at Hop Porter cost the city $80,000 to build about 10 years ago.
"The Hop Porter Park bathrooms are an eyesore," he said. "That is the worst graffiti I have ever seen. The people doing this are an embarrassment to the community and to their families."
In addition to the graffiti problem, there have been reports that homeless people looking for shelter have started fires in the Hop Porter Park bathrooms in winter.
Haemmerle said that until the graffitti problem is brought under control in Hailey, the money intended for bathrooms at McKercher Park would be better spent on bike paths in the city.
Tony Evans: tevans@mtexpress.com
Hailey surveillance
The Hailey Police Department plans to install surveillance cameras to protect city property at two locations, at a cost of $4,000 to $5,000 each. The solar-powered, still-image cameras will be placed outside the Hop Porter Park bathrooms and at the Hailey Skatepark, the two biggest problem areas for graffiti and vandalism in the city. Motion-detection systems in the cameras will trigger a flash and instantly download images of people using the premises at night. Power lines to cameras installed at Hop Porter's bathrooms three years ago were cut by vandals. "Vandalism is hard to get a handle on," said Public Works Director Tom Hellen, who will watch a demonstration of the cameras next week. "Right now we are trying to figure out how many we can afford and where to put them."
The Hailey City Council thinks the $80,000 custom-built bathrooms at Hop Porter Park in Hailey have been the target of vandals and graffiti artists for long enough. Power lines to a surveillance camera placed outside the bathrooms three years ago were cut by vandals.
Photo by David N. Seelig
