Re: Playground location a ‘blatant planning error,’ Letter, August 12

First of all, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Dave St. Louis, our director of community services, and Quin Malott, our parks and forestry manager, for the excellent job done on the playground replacement, installation.

The replacement of the playground set and making it completely accessible came to the Finance and Labour Relations sub-committee as a community services capital budget item for 2009. The budget was passed for 2009, but the work was carried over to 2010.
Council next saw mention of this replacement work as a consent agenda item early in 2010, stating the work was going to be tendered. A while later, the tender award came before council as an order of the day item, and council voted acceptance of the tender.

The replacement was never discussed at Community Services sub-committee or committee stage.

I suppose I, or any other member of council for that matter, could have mentioned at the consent agenda stage the concerns with noise from the playground.

This would have been where to mention the noise concerns because if any relocation was to be done, the tender amount would certainly increase.

However, since this was not done and the playground is now in place, we will have to make the best of the situation.

Having listened to several complaints regarding the noise levels, I brought those concerns to the Community Services sub-committee meeting on August 10.

I mentioned to the director that maybe we could try posting several signs around the playground area, reminding parents and grandparents to be a little more considerate of the concert listeners, and to encourage the children not to yell and scream while playing on the equipment during concert performances.

Staff are following up with the signs.

On further reflection of the location, from a safety point of view, the farther the playground is located from the roadways, the safer it is for the children.


Don Chapman
Councillor
Stratford