Adam Prudhomme
Editor
New playground equipment will soon be coming to Greater Napanee’s King Street Park.
Town council voted to pay the $1,500 that was needed to facilitate the purchase of the new equipment, which will replace a structure that was removed due to non-compliance to safety regulations. The $1,500 is added to an additional $15,000 that was previously budgeted for the equipment, to help fill the gap in funds needed for the purchase.
“Everyone has worked very hard to bring this piece of equipment back to King Street Park,” said Ward 5 councillor Ellen Johnson. “I know the community is using that park quite extensively and they were quite upset when the equipment was removed and would not be replaced in the same year.”
The request for the additional funding was part of Greater Napanee’s parks and facilities services facilities manager Chris Brown’s inventory and condition assessment report to council.
“We are in the process of purchasing a new piece of equipment to go in that place,” Brown told council about King Street Park. “We’re very close to accomplishing that.”
The new equipment is expected to be installed within six weeks.
His report also gave a brief overview of 13 parks found within Greater Napanee, offering a general idea of how often they’re used, a description of the equipment each one features, as well as recommendations to ensure they remain up to government safety standards. Of the town’s 13 parks, six were built between 1998 and 2003, with five built between 2003 and 2007. Greater Napanee’s newest park, Rotary Park at 38 Pearl St., was considered to be the one that saw the highest usage.
The date of installation is important because the parks must conform to the standards that were in place at the time.
“We do in-house visual inspections almost daily, certainly weekly of all our playgrounds and we do a written inspection every summer on each one of the parks,” said Brown.
Included in the report were the recommendations of John Zandarin, a Canadian certified playground inspector who did an onsite inspection of all the town’s parks in 2017. They included expanding protective surfacing zones, roto-tilling at least twice annually to improve surface compaction, replace worn seats and chains on swings, following signage requirements, delamination of protective coating and watching for drawstring entanglement hazards. Brown says corrective actions have taken place since the third party inspection.
Council voted to receive and accept Brown’s report.