Recurring vandalism at Pride Park in Taylor Mill has prompted the city to reallocate $50,000 from its reserves to its park budget for equipment replacement.
“Vandalism up there is terrible,” said City Commissioner Dan Murray at the city commission meeting Wednesday night. “They pull the walls down in the restroom. We can’t even keep a water fountain in Shelter 3 because they keep tearing it off the wall. Anything out of sight that they can tear up, that’s what they do.”
Public Works Director Jerry Jump said the problem occurs when kids leave school in the afternoon and go to the park to wait for their parents to pick them up.
The commission and Mayor Dan Bell were broadly in agreement there was a problem. The topic was broached by Commissioner Ed Kuehne, who didn’t immediately mention the vandalism. Instead, he pitched the idea as a general way of cushioning the city against expensive equipment repairs.
“Some of you don’t know there is a slide up there–It’s duct taped,” Kuehne said. “There’s some other things up there that need to be replaced. Now, if we wait till the spring to order it and put it in next year’s budget, you’re not going to get the materials until October.”
Before Wednesday’s meeting, the city had budgeted about $192,000 for parks, according to finance documents presented at the meeting.
Commissioner Caroline Braden spoke about some cursory research she’d done on the cost of various playground equipment.
“Basketball goals are $2,200 [and] up a piece,” Braden said. “Our basketball goals are in terrible shape. There’s a couple pieces of equipment on the children’s playground that’s non-existent: There’s things standing there that aren’t anything. We need to replace what we have first. We need to fix it so it’s safe and repair what we have.”
She pointed at equipment at the playground in Goebel Park in Covington’s Mainstrasse neighborhood as the sort of heavy duty equipment the city could consider investing in. She said she was waiting to hear back about how much such equipment might cost.
“We need to have a plan so that we don’t end up going, ‘Well, here goes another year, and the playground’s still not fixed,'” Braden said.
“I would emphasize that whatever we buy or replace, it has to be heavy duty,” said Mayor Bell.
“Go down to Mainstrasse, if you haven’t been there,” Braden said. “That stuff gets beat up to death.”
The commission cast a unanimous vote in favor of the one-time reallocation.