The phone kiosks are located along Jasper Avenue. (CBC)Stop at a phone booth on Edmonton's Jasper Avenue and you'll find more feces than telephones.

The booths, which are about a metre wide and the length of a car, no longer have telephones and now appear to be used more as washrooms and garbage dumps.

"It was an office for the drug dealers...and people were living in it," Jim Taylor, executive director with the Downtown Business Association, said of one booth at Jasper Avenue and 102nd Street.

Some business owners along the strip want the booths removed.

"It is pretty much an eyesore," said Irfan Keshwani about the booth outside his restaurant at 103rd Street. "It does attract sometimes an unsavory crowd, homeless people who are coming and using it as a shelter in bad weather."

Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel wants the booths cleaned up.

"We should make every effort to make sure these things are used properly, not as urinals or for improper purposes," he said.

If they can't be used as phone booths, then they should be removed, he added.

Booths offer advertising space

But not everyone is on board with getting rid of the booths, as they house a number of city utilities. Many of the booths are also used as a place to post flyers advertising local businesses.

Rachel Kemp, who works at The Hat Resto Pub on Jasper Avenue, said her business relies on such street-level advertising.

"This works and it's free, and I love the City of Edmonton for making it free for me, because then I don't have to pay a whole bunch of money to advertise on every radio station in the city," Kemp said.

The city's Responsible Hospitality Edmonton launched an online survey July 2 to look at safety issues downtown, including the booths.

The group, along with the Jasper Avenue Entertainment Working Group, will send the results to council later this month.

With files from the CBC's Tim Adams