New Park Vandalized, Costing City Thousands of Dollars
By
KGNS News
Story Created:
Dec 7, 2012 at 7:19 PM CDT
Story Updated:
Dec 7, 2012
The City of Laredo has unveiled a brand new park for the south side community of Loma Vista. Councilman Mike Garza in conjunction with Parks and Recreation unveiled the brand new Newman Community Park. It’s located right next to El Eden Recreation Center in South Laredo. This is phase two of the Rec Center and there are still 2 other phases to be complete. The cost of the project is $445,000.
However, with this new park for families in that community comes a big concern for the City of Laredo – vandalism, an everyday occurrence in this city.
According to the City of Laredo, they can't keep up with the crimes as they continue to spend to fix the problem. Eddie Millan with the Park & Recreation department says they are averaging 4 to 5 thousand dollars a month replacing and fixing vandalized materials. For example, right when the brand new park was being worked on, they ran into some problems saying, "We were working on this park and we had it fenced, and somebody came in and knocked down the back fence. Later, they snuck in and did damage to the playground here." Something they are all getting used to and it’s costing thousand of dollars to tax payers. The City of Laredo is asking the community to keep an eye on vandalism happening on these brand new parks.
If you see any activity, you are asked to call 311.
