Seattle auditor says public park bathrooms stink

Seattle needs more clean public bathrooms in city parks, according to a report from the City Auditor out this month. The report cites a lack of available facilities and recommends some improvements.

Seattle Parks and Recreation spends $3.7 million a year on bathroom renovations, according to the department’s budget. But if you want to find a toilet in a city park: good luck.

After a year of reviewing bathroom cleanliness at dozens of Seattle parks, the City Auditor’s office says the Parks Department, “is not cleaning park restrooms at a consistent level of quality” and falling behind on its goal to clean every facility at least twice a day.

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Availability is also an issue. There is confusion among parks employees about who is responsible to lock up which bathrooms and at what times.

“Restrooms are locked inconsistently and not according to plan,” the report says.

That’s a problem, especially if, like Holly Brown, you have little kids.

“Sometimes we need to go to the bathroom very soon, and we cannot,” Brown said at West Seattle’s Lincoln Park this week. “We carry a little toilet with us. We have also used trees and bushes, big logs. We have peed behind trolls before.”

She was standing near the wooden troll statue near the Colman Pool, which did have the restrooms open.

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Neil McAdams gave those toilets a positive review.

“It went great,” McAdams said.

However, he said he often has trouble finding a bathroom in the city.

“Oh, yeah, all the time, if you're downtown, there's nowhere to go to the bathroom, especially after five because everything closes,” he said.

McAdams said he plans trips around town based on where he knows bathrooms are open.

“I had a whole pee map of where I could go somewhere to go to the bathroom,” McAdams said.

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Signage and communication with the public is unreliable, the audit found. The parks department offers an online dashboard to show which bathrooms are closed, but that dashboard is often out of date or missing information.

The report said during visits to a sample of 50 park restrooms, “five were closed though the dashboard said they were open. Of these five, two did not have signage to indicate the reason for the closure.”

Even if there is a sign posted on a closed bathroom, the information can be confusing. A sign at a Lincoln Park bathroom tells people to scan a QR code to see a map of available bathrooms. Instead, the code directs to a city website about addressing homelessness. Someone wrote on the sign in marker, “No info.”

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After interviews and ride-alongs with Parks staff, the report acknowledges that the department is strained by staffing, funding, and daily problems like fires and vandalism.

The audit team made six recommendations to the Parks Department:

• Reassess its restroom cleanliness goals and resources.
• Set consistent cleanliness expectations.
• Improve monitoring and data collection.
• Review restroom opening and locking responsibilities.
• Conduct a staffing analysis to help meet preventive maintenance goals.
• Address risks related to restroom renovation projects.

In response to the auditor’s report, Parks and Recreation Superintendent AP Diaz “generally concurred” with the audit team’s findings. He called for more money and staffing to keep up with maintenance and said the department is launching a hiring campaign this year.

According to Diaz the city is renovating dozens of bathrooms so they can be available year round. About 60 of the 129 park bathrooms are being weatherized for winter use, Diaz wrote in an email to the auditor’s office.

They expect to complete work around 2028.