If you are looking for a great place to get a lot of desert greenspace and an actual lake, look no further than Ascarate Park in the Lower Valley. If you're looking for a restroom in all that beautiful desert greenspace in Ascarate Park you probably have had a tough time finding one. A few years back a local news station did a story about how the permanent restrooms at Ascarate were closed and padlocked, and the porta-potties that were there for the public to use were filthy and in one case, missing an entire wall. So much for privacy.

For almost four years, people who have gone to Ascarate have had to deal with not having public restrooms, but the County says that is going to change, but you'll have to wait until next year to be able to use public restrooms in the park.

County officials with the Parks and Recreation Department say that the money to fix the Ascarate Park public restrooms was allocated two years ago, but problems in the planning process delayed the project. The director of the County Parks and Rec Department said that they had vendors withdraw bids, and there were budget problems because of the sudden COVID-19 pandemic that had to be dealt with.

The County has been spending 13,000 a year on porta-potties but that money will now go instead to the $585,000 budget for the restrooms project. There is no word on when the repairs will begin but County officials say they hope the project will be completed by the end of next year.

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