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4 GROUNDCOVER NEWS PUBLIC SERVICES 3 more years for Throne EMILIE ZIEBARTH Groundcover contributor Public bathrooms in Ann Arbor have received the royal treatment, but what is the status of Ann Arbor’s famous Throne toilets? In the summer of 2023, the city launched its pilot of a partnership with Throne, a private company which provides and maintains portable full service toilets, complete with running water, a mirror, and changing tables. The high-tech units are equipped with multiple mechanisms for providing feedback on cleanliness, including 21 internal sensors and a survey, which prompts users to rate the condition of the unit. The toilets can be accessed by cell phone, using either a QR code, text message, or mobile app. For those without a phone, key cards are available at the Ann Arbor City Hall, the Delonis Center and First Baptist Church. The phone and key card entry system allows Throne to collect data on usage volume for timely cleaning, and, for safety reasons, allows the unit to limit a single use to 10 minutes. After the initial one year pilot, the city reviewed data and found that the toilet’s ratings were higher than projected, reported Throne. Year one results found: a 4.4/5 average cleanliness rating and zero instances requiring law enforcement, quieting concerns that the public toilets may serve as sites for criminal behavior or be poorly maintained. Since then, the city has extended its contract with Throne for five years. For 2025-26, the City signed a $541,000 contract with Throne to continue with the maintenance of eight toilets downtown. The Downtown Development Authority is partnering with the city to provide funding for the toilets. While the current year-long agreement ends in June, City Administrator Derek Delacourt confirmed that the city has renewed its contract with Throne for 2026-27. There was some initial chatter in the city that the Throne units were in place to test possible locations for permanent public bathrooms, but Delacourt stated that the city is not currently considering constructing new permanent public toilets. Ann Arbor is not alone in its need for more public toilets. The United States averages just eight public toilets per 100,000 residents, while nations with Throne bathroom on Liberty St. comes in handy during street festivals like Sonic Lunch. the highest concentration have over fifty public toilets per 100,000 (Public Toilet Index.) While most avoid the topic, the reality is: everyone needs to go. Indeed, 70% of Americans report using public toilets one to five times per week (Bradley’s Handwashing Survey.) The need for public toilets goes beyond convenience and should be understood as a public health issue, as many, including unhoused individuals and those with certain chronic illnesses, experience debilitating consequences without access to a Private labor, public services AYAT SOHOUBAH U-M student contributor Across a wide range of basic city functions, Ann Arbor has repeatedly chosen private contracting over direct municipal provision. In recent years, the City Council has approved or renewed contracts for street resurfacing, sidewalk repair, street tree pruning, park forestry work, sidewalk snow removal and janitorial services. These decisions reveal the pattern that Ann Arbor keeps public responsibility at the level of funding, oversight and contract management, while moving much of the actual labor outside city government. The City still raises the money, writes the specifications, awards the contracts and remains politically accountable for the results, but outside firms often do the day-to-day labor. In 2026 alone, the city moved to renew a $6.7 million street resurfacing contract with Cadillac Asphalt and a sidewalk repair contract with Precision Concrete. In 2024, it approved contracts with PPM Tree Service for routine street tree pruning and with Davey Tree for park forestry services. A $1.14 million janitorial contract for major city facilities was approved by it in 2023. In the 2024 sidewalk snow removal contract, staff wrote that snow clearing on city-maintained sidewalks had historically been done by Parks staff for Public Works, but that those employees were also responsible for parks, parking lots and facility maintenance, creating “competing interests” that reduced the staff available for timely pedestrian snow removal. The team presented the contract with Target Facility Management to improve efficiency. In the City’s towing system, Ann Arbor’s own documents state that public tows are typically administered through contracts with private tow companies, and officials said a revised arrangement with Washtenaw County was meant to improve customer service and reduce costs to people whose vehicles were towed. On the City’s towing page today, residents can still find approved towing companies and pay them directly for towing and storage fees. Seen one by one, these decisions can look routine, but taken together, they suggest a larger picture of how Ann Arbor understands public responsibility. The City appears to prefer an administrative model in which the government sets rules and manages contracts, while private firms carry out the work itself. What makes this especially notable is that alternatives have been discussed. In 2021 and 2022, the City Council directly explored the possibility of municipal sidewalk snow removal. The Transportation Commission endorsed municipal sidewalk snow removal as an urgent need, and a city memo analyzed the feasibility of a city-run program for winter sidewalk maintenance. That memo estimated first-year costs at about $559,153 and second-year costs at about $394,152, for a two-year total of roughly $953,305. By comparison, the 2024 sidewalk snow removal contract with Target Facility Management was approved for up to $150,000 for one year. The cityrun option would likely cost more, but that is also the point: the debate is not only about the cheapest short-term arrangement, but about what level of public investment Ann Arbor is willing to make in basic services. That is where a Zohran Mamdani-style frame becomes useful. Mamdani, the mayor of New York City, has argued for a more direct government role in providing public services. During a major winter storm, his administration promoted New York’s emergency snow shoveler program, which employed more than 1,000 people to help clear snow during active snowfall. The example is useful because it shows a different way of thinking about snow removal: not only as a service to be managed, but as public work that can be organized through the city itself. Whether or not one agrees with those politics, it offers a useful contrast. It asks a different question: not simply who can do a job cheapest this year, but whether some basic services should remain under more direct public control. Ann Arbor’s repeated reliance on contractors may be efficient in some cases, but it also raises a broader question about what residents should expect from city government. If services like snow removal, sidewalk repair, tree maintenance and facility cleaning are all treated mainly as contracts to administer, then public responsibility becomes more distant from the actual work people rely on every day. The City should not reject contracting entirely, but it should be more willing to ask when direct municipal service would create stronger accountability, better long-term capacity and a clearer public commitment to the people who live here. public bathroom. Yet, solutions to the issue have been plagued by bureaucratic inefficiencies in many cities, perhaps most famously New York City, which has had 15 self-cleaning toilets in a storage unit since 2006, due to an inability to select locations for the units. Ann Arbor’s program is a hopeful success story in the crappy history of U.S. public bathrooms, and the model seems to be catching on; Royal Oak and Detroit have followed suit, installing their own Throne toilets in July 2025. JUNE 12, 2026

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