New showers should stop travellers baring all at library
Some freedom campers in Golden Bay have taken that freedom to new levels – stripping naked in the Takaka Memorial Library public toilets and using the handbasins to wash themselves.
Tasman District Council community development manager Susan Edwards this week outlined the extent of the problem.
‘‘We’ve had times during the summer period at the Takaka library where there has been a queue for the bathroom right through the library . . . and out the door and right along through the courtyard,’’ Edwards told the community development committee. ‘‘That’s people who are wanting to wash themselves in the handbasins.
‘‘We’ve had people who have washed their whole bodies with no clothes on in those areas.’’
Library staff, who had to clean up regularly after the illicit ablutions, had installed signs pointing out that the basins were for hand washing only, Edwards said.
A council report says when such behaviour occurred in the past, staff turned off the hot water. It also says a small child slipped recently on the floor of the toilets, which was wet after a person washed their hair in a basin. The child was not injured.
Golden Bay Ward councillor Paul Sangster said it symptomatic of an ongoing problem with transient people washing themselves in the library loos.
‘‘Our biggest worry is that a person of an older age than a child could break a hip or something falling over, and that would be a real disaster,’’ Sangster said.
Edwards said it had been a ‘‘big issue . . . but we are very much hoping that once the showers go in, attached to the toilets near the i-SITE, that it will reduce this problem’’. She was referring to the planned installation before Christmas of two unisex showers and at least one outdoor sink.
Council community relations manager Chris Choat said just under half of the expected $130,000 cost of the new ablution block had been met by a grant from the Government’s Tourism Infrastructure Fund. The showers would be userpays, with the price still to be finalised, he said.
‘‘People . . . are wanting to wash themselves in the handbasins.’’
Susan Edwards, Tasman District Council