Found money

Library seeks to renovate its washrooms to serve Picton eventgoers

The Prince Edward County Library wants to renovate its bathrooms in the Picton Library to make them accessible from outside during public events on or around Main Street. The library bathrooms already get used by folks shopping or attending events downtown. Barbara Sweet, the library’s CEO, was before a committee of council last week seeking its support for a plan to move them and provide access after hours.

She explained that the library board was hoping to make an application to the Canadian Infrastructure Improvement Fund for half of the project costs of about $90,000. She said the library’s portion of the cost would be covered by a donor’s bequest.

Sweet said the current washrooms’ location creates a bit of a hazard, and that moving them would free up more work and resource space. Sophiasburgh Councillor Kevin Gale was cheered to hear that Picton might gain public washrooms without spending municipal dollars, but worried who might maintain them. He worried too that security could be an issue with externally accessible public washrooms.

Sweet explained that she believed a timed locking mechanism and more lighting would address safety concerns. She noted as well that this project was a renovation of existing washrooms, and that the library currently maintains them and would continue to maintain the renovated facilities.

Athol Councillor Jamie Forrester noted that the municipality currently spends about $20,000 to maintain bathrooms in Bloomfield and worried that increased maintenance costs with an externally accessible washroom might fall upon the municipal taxpayer.

Hallowell Councillor Keith MacDonald feels too much money is spent on Picton. He said he would rather see federal, provincial and municipal dollars used to improve bike paths to bring people to Picton.

But it was Ameliasburgh Councillor Nick Nowitski who remembered that, a year ago May, Sweet was before council, cap in hand, because her organization had gone $26,000 over budget on repairs to the exterior wall and roof of the Picton Library. She said the municipality would have to pay the bill as the library had no money to draw upon. Council reached into a reserve fund to pay the overrun.

“You had money in the bank for two years,” said Nowitski to Sweet. “Why did you come back to council for money to finish repairs to the walls?”

Sweet explained that at the time, the bequest was committed to library programming but the library board recently decided to “repurpose” the funds for this use.

Despite the imperfect explanation—council gave its blessing to Sweet, enabling her to pursue the funding opportunity.