8/30/10

Conclusion on Montgomery County Toilets

This toilet was brought to you by...

By: Brian Hughes
Examiner Staff Writer
August 26, 2010

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Montgomery County park officials hung banners Thursday honoring a local cleaning company that donated $40,000 to keep portable toilets in the parks. (Andrew Harnik/Examiner)

As some Montgomery County park visitors sit on the john, they'll have a four-lettered word on the brain -- WTOP.

The radio station's logo will be slapped inside a portable toilet it sponsored on park property. So will the Long Branch Civic Association's, a promotional strategy that gives new meaning to flushing away the competition.

And for a mere $800 a year, you too can have unprecedented access to the squatting demographic.

Montgomery County park officials Thursday hung up banners honoring A Step in Time Chimney Sweeps, a local cleaning company that donated $40,000 to keep the toilet bowls in the parks. The brand will become a mainstay at parks in Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Silver Spring and Potomac for at least the next few months.

Arguably the most contested cost-saving plan in a historically lean budget year, the county's park department announced it would scrap all 130 rental port-a-potties on its grounds. But Montgomery residents uniformly slammed the effort to save $155,000, calling it unsafe, unsanitary and inexcusable for one of the nation's wealthiest communities.

In recent weeks, private sponsors and newfound money in the department's budget resurrected the commodes until at least the end of the fiscal year on June 30.

Though most sponsors won't be awarded massive banners -- those are reserved for the "most generous sponsor" ?-- a new advertising presence is coming to the parks.

"We're going to go out to the community and say, 'What can you live with?'" explained parks spokeswoman Kate Stookey, alluding to more sponsors in the future.

Anticipating potential backlash, she added, "The department does not want to overwhelm the park experience."

The parks budget was among the hardest hit this fiscal year, absorbing a nearly 17 percent reduction.

The county's contract with Don's Johns, the region's largest portable toilet provider, was reduced by $60,000 this year. Coupled with the private sponsors and more than 40 Montgomery park employees who accepted early-retirement incentives, the toilets never left the properties.

A Step in Time Chimney Sweeps, by itself, donated enough money to keep at least one portable toilet at all 80 parks for six months, and the WTOP and Long Branch Civic Association signs will be inserted in coming days, Stookey said.

And yes, park officials are still offering space in the newly lucrative toilet market.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/This-toilet-was-brought-to-you-by___-599964-101600523.html#ixzz0y6FX59hW

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