Woodland, CA Public Conduct: Public Urination (2026)

Section 9.28.280 is a short, direct prohibition: subsection A makes it "unlawful and a misdemeanor for any person to urinate or defecate in or upon any street, sidewalk, alley, plaza, park, public building, publicly maintained facility, or any place open to the public or exposed to public view." The section carves out one exception by its own terms, clarifying it does not reach the use of "lawfully constructed restroom facilities designed for the sanitary disposal of human waste," so using a public restroom, portable toilet or similar facility for its intended purpose is not a violation regardless of location.

Subsection B sets the penalty by cross-reference: a violation is a misdemeanor punished under Section 1.08.070, the code's general penalty provision covering continuing violations and aiding or abetting. Unlike several of the other public-conduct sections in Chapter 9.28, this section carries no infraction option or graduated fine schedule of its own; charging it as a misdemeanor from the first offense reflects the code's treatment of the conduct as more serious than the infraction-level open-container or smoking violations nearby in the same chapter. The section derives from Prior Code Section 15-55 and was carried forward by Ordinance 1713 on October 3, 2023.