Nobody wins with vandalism
This section of the jungle gym at Smelterville's City Park was pulled apart. Floor boards have been replaced due to someone stomping them out. In the wake of the vandalism, the city has decided to close the park until further notice.
Courtesy photo
SMELTERVILLE — Kids in Smelterville are going to have to go somewhere else to play now that city officials have decided to close the city park.
According to Smelterville City Clerk Heidi Klein, ongoing and escalating issues with vandalism forced the city to make the tough call.
The park was officially open on Memorial Day weekend and since that time there have been three different occasions where boards have been purposefully broken on the jungle gym equipment, a porta-potty was set on fire, and the volleyball net has been damaged repeatedly.
With no on-site bathroom facilities, the city thought renting a porta-potty would allow parents and families a little more freedom to go to the park and stay for extended periods of time, but now the city has to pay to replace the toasted toilet.
“It really came down to how many times are we going to pay to repair all of these damages,” Klein said. “So we started thinking that maybe we just needed to close the park.”
Since that time, the city has also received reports of people defecating in the park — which is quite literally a consequence of the porta-potty’s destruction.
It’s believed that whoever is responsible for the damage is either hopping the fence somewhere or using what the city refers to as the lower gate to get into the park where they can successfully avoid the cameras that the city installed in the park.
Klein said they would like to get law enforcement involved, but at this point they have nothing to give for evidence that would help them investigate — although it is expected to be a topic of discussion at the next Smelterville City Council meeting.
The tipping point finally happened recently, after a mother alleged that a group of teenagers were responsible for breaking the boards, as well as smoking cigarettes inside the play tubes and then putting them out on the plastic tubing.
It was this same mother who further explained that her 3-year-old fell through one of the broken floor boards and was hanging from the jungle gym when she got to them.
“It was at this point that we decided we needed to close the park before someone gets hurt and the city gets sued,” Klein said.
At this point, the city has decided that the park will remain closed until the city council can meet to determine what their course of action is going to be — likely at the August city council meeting.
In the interim, if anyone has any information that they would like to report or perhaps someone grows a conscience, they can call Smelterville City Hall at 208-786-3351.