Unsafe play
Deltona parks inspection, disrepair plague playground

By BOB KOSLOW

DELTONA, Fla. -- Hundreds of happy residents and noisy children attended the Imagination Playground dedication celebration 13 years ago.

Today, the large playground at Wes Crile Park is eerily quiet.

The playground, funded by thousands of dollars in donations and built by volunteers, is surrounded by yellow caution tape. Rust has eaten into bolts holding handrails and is corroding the metal lattice decks and footbridges between ladders, towers and slides.

City officials earlier this month closed the playground after a former parks official publicly complained that repairs and routine inspections had been neglected for years, and deterioration made the equipment unsafe for children to use.

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"I am very disappointed the city let it fall apart," said Stony Sixma, a co-chairman of the committee that helped fund and build the playground. "We spent two long years of meetings and fundraising. It's at the city's main park. There is no reason it should not have been maintained. No reason."

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Deltona officials knew the playground was deteriorating more than three years ago but ignored warnings and failed to act, said Nick Tramont, a former Deltona parks manager who was forced to resign in mid-2006 for political reasons, he said. Tramont admitted sending the city an e-mail complaint on March 1 describing the deterioration.

"I supervised employees who did inspections about every six months. Wes Crile (Park) was one of the worst. I had a file on my desk for each park labeled playground inspections," Tramont said. "I even worked with the (Imagination Playground) vendor to get a parts list to bring the playground up to code. I believe the list went to the city manager, but nothing was ever done."

The News-Journal asked to review those inspection reports, but none could be found, Deltona Parks and Recreation Director Patti Evans said.

"We have not been able to find them since this incident occurred," Evans said Thursday.

Evans said a cursory inspection was conducted at all city playgrounds about three to five months ago as the department revised its risk management policy, but city officials could not find that report either last week.

Evans said parks workers were supposed to be inspecting the playgrounds at least monthly, but "it never got added to the schedule."

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Progress has been made on some of the inherited problems, Evans said.

She closed the Campbell Park playground less than 30 days after she took the job. Construction is under way to renovate the park and add a new playground.

The playground at Dwight Hawkins Park was recently replaced and the playground at Festival Park was closed for a day this month to fix broken parts.

Imagination Playground has to be removed and replaced quickly, Evans said. The estimated cost is $40,000 and will probably be taken from another project.

Imagination Playground has been a heavily used facility, she said, especially after the city added a splash pad two years ago next to the playground.

Two parks employees recently passed playground inspection-certification classes offered by the National Program for Playground Safety. They began a monthly inspection program this month, Evans said, to supplement what parks crews are supposed to be doing daily at each of the 18 city parks and 13 playgrounds.

"There are always going to be issues with playgrounds, I will say that, but there will not be an issue like at Wes Crile right now," Evans said.

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