Police, council, community work to ‘resurrect’ playground
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
The Seventh Ward Playground in Washington has had a makeover. New mulch was spread, graffiti was removed and lighting was updated, among other improvements.
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
A view of Hillcrest Playground, off Hillcrest Playground Road in the Black Diamond section of Monongahela
New mulch, benches, picnic tables, lighting, play equipment and paint have the Seventh Ward Playground in Washington looking like a brand new park, less than one month after council members closed it under a nuisance ordinance.
“The outreach of the community is just unbelievable with everything they’ve done up there,” Washington police Chief Robert Wilson said.
Wilson had been the one to request council temporarily close the playground, after his department responded to 14 disturbance calls at the park in two months. Several residents on Second Street and Donnan Avenue complained to council during its July meeting about a large group of children who had been congregating in the park at night and destroying park property and private property of the surrounding neighbors.
Troublesome playgrounds aren’t new to Washington or other parts of the county. The city’s Eighth Ward Playground “had its issues in years past,” Mayor Scott Putnam said.
“The cleanup there has certainly helped that playground,” he said.
A nonprofit collaboration of churches, called The Dreamers Co., spent a community service week known as Mission Washington cleaning up the Eighth Ward playground last year.
“For about two years now, we’ve been very passionate about playgrounds,” said Aaron Miller, an associate pastor at Life Church and member of The Dreamers Co. “We just noticed that the playgrounds in the city were in disrepair.”
Wilson said their cleanup of the Eighth Ward Playground has “lessened” the amount of crime and vandalism that took place there.
Monongahela has had problems recently with young people spray-painting signs in the parks.
“We had people complain that the parks were getting deplorable and wanted to see them fixed up,” said Monongahela Councilman William Polonoli.
He said because funding for the park is limited, they are working to get grants to upgrade the city parks. Part of those upgrades, he hopes, will be surveillance cameras. He said while the city’s police department does patrol the parks, like Mounds and Crest Hill parks, “they can only do so much.”
“There’s no use fixing stuff if it’s going to get destroyed and you don’t know who’s doing it,” Polonoli said.
Surveillance and patrols are the two things Canonsburg officials attribute to keeping their parks safe. Canonsburg police Chief Alex Coghill said his department has responded to loitering at the Canonsburg Playground, along Perry Como Avenue near Giffin Avenue.
“We’ll usually hear neighbor complaints about noise, so when that happens, we’ll have officers in the park,” he said. “We’re pretty proactive with patrols in the park.”
He said the video surveillance they have in the borough parks “deters” criminal mischief. He said the borough still sees vandalism from time to time, but “nothing that would be a nuisance.”
Canonsburg Mayor David Rhome said teenagers sometimes paint their names or break things in the park, but most of the complaints that are received relate to noise.
One of the biggest problems at Seventh Ward Playground, according to residents and Wilson, was visibility. There was little to no lighting, and that, along with heavy tree coverage and overgrown shrubs along the fence, made it nearly impossible for neighbors or police officers to see into the park from the road, especially at night, making the playground vulnerable to vandalism and similar teenage mischief.
That was improved three weeks ago when the same volunteers who cleaned up Eighth Ward Playground, Mission Washington, took on the Seventh Ward park. Their group, along with other community partners, trimmed trees, put in new lights and cleared away some of the brush.
“Everything that I brought to their attention, they’ve done,” Wilson said about the volunteers. “So, it’s no doubt going to help us do our job.”
Even following its makeover, the playground is still technically closed, though no signs have been posted and it has not been fenced off. Councilman Matthew Staniszewski said council has had several discussions on the “next best steps” for the playground and that it could come up in discussion during the city’s council meetings this week.
“We’ve been blessed with groups of volunteers that have stepped up,” he said. “We definitely want to hear feedback from the volunteers and the residents that mobilize those volunteers.”
Staniszewski said he’s looking into options for “family-oriented” programming in the playground that would give neighborhood children something to do.
“We’re just looking at providing a safe and secure area for not only the playground but also the residents who live around there,” he said. “It’s a collaborative effort between the mayor and council, the police department and the community to resurrect the park.”
Miller said The Dreamers Co. is also working to “get some stakeholders” together to talk about programming options.
“Programming is on everybody’s heart right now,” he said. “By next summer, we’d like The Dreamers Co. to be able to offer some programming for kids in the playgrounds. I know we’re not going to be able to do it alone. It’s a shared load of responsibility.”