Town Council Adopts Public Urination Bylaw
The installation of the Portland Loo public restroom at Kendrick Park has been delayed because it apparently does not comply with state plumbing regulations. The only after hours public restroom is at the Police Station. Photo: amherstma.gov
Report on the Meeting of the Amherst Town Council, November 24, 2025
This meeting was a hybrid meeting held in Town Hall and was recorded.
Present
Lynn Griesemer (President, District 2), Andy Steinberg, Mandi Jo Hanneke, and Ellisha Walker (at large), Freke Ette and Cathy Schoen (District 1), Pat DeAngelis (District 2), George Ryan and Hala Lord (District 3), Pam Rooney and Jennifer Taub (District 4), and Ana Devlin Gauthier (District 5). Absent: Bob Hegner (District 5)
Staff: Paul Bockelman (Town Manager) and Athena O’Keeffe (Council Clerk)
The Town Council is meeting weekly until at least December 15 in order to complete items before them prior to the ending of the current term on January 1, 2026. At the November 24 meeting, the council approved a bylaw specifying a $300 fine for a noncriminal offense of urinating or defecating in public. Police had requested the fine to give them a middle option between a verbal warning and a criminal charge which would remain on a person’s record.
Amherst Police Chief Gabe Ting attended the meeting to answer questions raised by councilors at the November 17 meeting. He stated, “The majority of instances come from neighborhood parties, certainly from the center of town; our officers will encounter folks coming to and from the bars using the sidewalks and bushes, in public view, to urinate.” Most of the offenders are college students, and he stated that while the police department has a cooperative relationship with the Dean of Students who can follow up with other measures, this cannot happen with only a verbal warning.
Because public urination and defecation is a criminal offense under state law, Councilors Mandi Jo Hanneke and Pat DeAngelis introduced an amendment to the bylaw with a tiered approach consisting of a penalty of five hours of community service for the first offense, a $100 fine for the second, and $300 fines for all subsequent offenses. Ting pointed out that only a judge can assign a community service obligation and that is for criminal offenses. He also did not like the tiered fine structure and thought officers would think a smaller fine was not worth the paperwork involved.
DeAngelis worried that some students might not be able to pay the fine and then would be saddled with a criminal record. She also liked the idea of community service to “see the people who are doing this really cleaning something up and doing something to restore what they messed.” However, she realized that the service was not an option. Ting noted that $300 fines are assessed for open containers in public and noise complaints, and word of these fines spreads so that violations decline at the beginning of each school year. The hope is that this bylaw will similarly result in a decrease of public urination and defecation. He added that, for those who cannot pay the fine, there is an appeals process, and all violations go through checks and balances with review by supervisors.
Councilor Andy Steinberg thought that the fine should be high enough so that it was not simply deemed “the cost of having fun” but would act as a deterrent. He also thought that the odds of an officer seeing the same person offending three times was slim. George Ryan agreed and said that the council should accept the chief’s suggestion of a $300 fine.
The draft bylaw was previously approved in the Town Services and Outreach Committee (TSO) and sent to the Governance, Organization, and Legislation Committee (GOL) to be evaluated for “clarity, consistency, and actionability.” GOL asked for a legal opinion from K-P Law and received a recommendation that the bylaw be reduced to a single sentence: “Persons shall urinate and defecate only in designated facilities designed and permitted for such purposes.”
Several councilors were unhappy with the K-P Law recommendation, because it had no exception for those who are homeless or have medical issues, especially since there are no public restrooms downtown. Hala Lord said she objected to public urination and defecation being a criminal offense at all.
The lack of specificity in the K-P Law wording prompted Hanneke and DeAngelis’ rewrite of the bylaw, adding the tiered fine and exemptions. A vote to remove the tiered fine was passed by a vote of 7-5 (DeAngelis, Lord, Ana Devlin Gauthier, Cathy Schoen, and Ellisha Walker voted no). The revised bylaw passed by a 10-2 vote with Schoen and DeAngelis voting no.
The approved bylaw reads:
Criminal Enforcement: $300.00 fine
Noncriminal: $300.00 penalty (enforcement by: Police Officers) ______________________________________________________________________ ____
A. Prohibitions and exceptions: It shall be unlawful for any person to urinate or defecate in, or in view of, a public place other than one set aside and designated for that particular purpose. Persons who violate this bylaw due to verified medical conditions shall be exempt from the enforcement provisions of this bylaw.
B. Public place defined Any place where the conduct may reasonably be expected to be viewed or could be viewed by others is a public place. Such areas shall include, but not be limited to, any street, alley, sidewalk, parking lot, park, playground, schoolyard, cemetery, floor of any building, except in such place that has been designated a restroom.
Questions Raised About Proposed Transportation and Parking Commission
TSO has spent much of the year working on the creation of a Transportation and Parking Commission (TPC) to streamline the approval of changes to town streets and sidewalks. Currently, proposed changes are referred to TSO, which then consults the Transportation Advisory Committee (TAC), the Commission for Persons with Disabilities, and the DPW, and often the police department, before making a recommendation to the full council. The TPC would consist of members from those departments and committees, as well as one or two Town Councilors. Final decisions on major changes will still be made by the council.
TSO member Ryan stated that the policy was developed after obtaining detailed information from Northampton, which has a similar commission.
Creation of the TPC would also require changes to the town council’s “Policy Regarding Control of the Public Way.” The changes exempt hearings about the placement of utility poles, which would remain the purview of the council. It would also exclude broad policy changes, such as the revision of the streetlight policy that was proposed by Hanneke several years ago and is awaiting action by the Town Manager and DPW Superintendent.
Discussion centered on whether the TPC should have councilors as members, which Council President Lynn Griesemer said had not worked out well with the Energy and Climate Action Committee. Other questions were raised regarding the frequency of TPC reporting to the council. Hanneke wanted to make sure that reports were not given after decisions had been made. Jennifer Taub noted that this is a reason for having at least one councilor on the TPC. Pam Rooney stated that it was important for the TPC to get back to residents who made requests for street changes.
Griesemer asked that councilors send their suggestions for changes to the policies to Ryan or TSO Chair Andy Steinberg, and the council would discuss the policies again on December 8. Ryan said that creating the TPC was an enormous amount of work for TSO, and it would be “distressing” to him not to have it approved during this council term.
Human Rights Commission Urges Approval of Revised Bylaws
Members of the Human Rights Commission (HRC) came before the council to report on their recent work and to urge acceptance of their revised bylaws.
The HRC, in conjunction with Amherst Media, recently completed a video on human rights that will be premiered on Human Rights Day, December 10. It will also be posted on the town website and the Amherst Media site.
A coalition of several local organizations joined the HRC in holding a workshop on the protection of immigrants, which drew over 125 participants. The HRC also sponsors the annual Youth Hero Awards and the Global Village Festival. There are resources on the HRC website for many issues, such as tenants’ rights and immigrants’ rights, workplace rights, and reporting hate crimes.
Chair Rani Parker said, “Human rights work cannot happen quietly or behind closed doors. It has to be public, accessible, and grounded in community.” HRC member Liz Haygood added, “We are a diverse community, and sometimes the people of this town don’t know that.”
The council referred the proposed HRC bylaw changes to GOL, but acknowledged that the committee would probably not have time to evaluate them until the next term.
As someone who has both owned and managed downtown Amherst businesses over the past decades, I have frequently found those establishments serving as de facto public restrooms for visitors who simply had nowhere else to go. And now, as a grandparent who takes my toddler grandchild to our parks, I am directly reminded that there is no safe and reasonable nearby bathroom option for families. Even our newly expanded common, created specifically to encourage people to gather downtown, has no restroom.
The Town Council’s recent bylaw imposing a $300 fine for public urination attempts to address an issue that has become more common in the downtown core. But a punitive response does not solve the root problem: Amherst lacks enough accessible, clean, and well-maintained public bathrooms. Penalizing people for needing a restroom when none is available is neither practical nor fair.
Public restrooms are essential infrastructure. They support public health, equity, walkability, and local business vitality. When reasonable restroom access is unavailable, people are forced into untenable choices, and businesses often bear the burden. This is neither sustainable nor aligned with our goals for a thriving downtown. Other communities have successfully invested in durable, single-stall public restroom units that are cost-effective to maintain and designed to minimize misuse.
If the town truly wants to reduce public urination, the most direct and humane solution is to provide the facilities people need. Amherst should prioritize installing appropriately located public restrooms, with accessibility, safety, and maintenance built into the plan, rather than relying primarily on fines that do not address the underlying lack of infrastructure.
We can also do a far better job of informing people, through signage, where public bathrooms are located currently and during what hours – which apparently include the police station, the town hall, the library (when opened) and the Bangs Community Center.
A downtown that welcomes families, supports businesses, and encourages community use must also provide the dignity of a restroom when people need one. It is time to invest in the basic infrastructure that matches the community values we say we hold.