Kamloops could be buying Portland Loos, if provincial grant funding is approved.

The city will be applying for up to $2.5 million to install Portland Loos, among other things, related to social issues.

Director of Community and Protective Services, Byron McCorkell, says stand-alone bathrooms are needed, particularly for street-affected people.

“Portland Loos, or that style of facility, is expensive. You have to find some place that’s serviced, and then you have to buy the unit and install it. But, what we have also found, is we have no other places to do washrooms easily. In our two experiments that we have done… we needed to renovate buildings in order to get facilities in.”

He says those experiments for public washrooms have been at 48 Victoria Street West, and at 340 Victoria Street.

The city expects the loos would cost at least $400,000 to $600,000. McCorkell says they likely wouldn’t get built if the grant funding is not successful.

Meanwhile, if the grant is successful, other spending proposed includes building a new fenced pathway from social housing on Mission Flats Road to the city centre, near the CP Rail lines, which the city expects would cost $600,000. McCorkell says Community Service Officers and social housing providers have voiced concerns that people are cutting through the fence between 1st Avenue and the Overlanders Bridge to get the river bank.

“Working with CP, as well, it’s been identified as a concern area for them, along that whole corridor, all the way from First Avenue out. So basically we see this as an opportunity to piggyback on the other conversation outside of this one.”

Other spending with the grant money would pay the salaries for one year of two more security guards, who would work on graveyard shifts, and two more Community Service Officers.

“They’re term sensitive for a one-year period. Whether we come back to you in the budget in a year from now and ask for two more, does not mean we did it because of this. It would be because I can justify the workload that has been accomplished through that,” McCorkell says, adding council would be able to decide whether to continue with the spending.

With the grant, the city is also proposing to buy a mobile washroom building with a shower facility for the street-affected population to use, and would pay to bring in a peer outreach program.

City staff will apply for the grant by the end of this week, and expect to hear back by the middle of May.