I attended a Certified Playground Safety Inspection audit of the Tot-Lot at Perret Park in Lakeland Village this morning at 8:00 AM.
In attendance were three representatives from Riverside County Regional Parks and Open Space District – Community Parks Division. The Community Parks Division is relatively new to the County of Riverside as prior to this, about a year, Economic Development Agency (EDA) took care of the community parks.
Present were
William Cloake IV, Parks Superintendent,
Bob Wagner, Parks Maintenance Supervisor, CPSI
Paul Sanderson, CSA Maintenance, CPSI (this is the man who conducted the actual audit)
The seal of approval
You read that correctly, two of the personnel present were CPSI (Certified Playground Safety Inspector)
They came with a copy in hand the Public Playground Safety Handbook Pamphlet #325 (2010) issued by the U.S. Product Safety Commission and adopted by California Statue.
With them they also had an audit sheet detailing all the areas needing to be checked and their requirements and the necessary tools to perform the inspection.
Thiese are representative of the types of tools they brought with them
The Tot-Lot at Perret Park is about as large as the lot at Marna O’Brien which was built at approximately the time period. It was a couple of inches low as measured by the inspector, on Engineered Wood Fiber (EWF) surfacing material, much like Marna O’Brien. In the next couple of weeks the same type of material will be brought in to bring it up to the 9 inches of compacted material required, this Engineered Wood Fiber (EWF) meets A.D.A requirements.
All of the equipment was inspected for missing or loose hardware while it was being checked for protrusion hazards, using the appropriate tools.
The equipment was also tested for head entrapment hazards which could result in the strangulation of a child should their body pass thru a hole but not their head.
Also checked for was entanglement hazards along with crush hazard which may snag a piece of clothing or cause an amputation.
The inspection of this one park took about 2 hours time and will go a long way in giving parents piece of mind when they let their child have fun in this Tot-Lot.
Ken Mayes has done Wildomar’s citizens a great service by bringing these park safety issues to the city’s attention. He has not only identified problems with all three of our Tot-Lots, but he has taken the time to research and present materials and information to assist in resolving these safety issues. He has wisely defined all the steps the city needs to affect a proper solution to a serious problem, which would hopefully prevent child injuries and ward off potentially costly litigation.
Now comes the question of whether or not our city council and their staff will take advantage of all this information and accept their responsibility to remedy the problems in a professional manner or whether they will persist in doing their usual half-hearted, amateurish job and leave citizens with another poorly planned in inadequately executed job.
Mayor Marsha Swanson and council member Bridgette Moore are Wildomar’s Parks and Recreation Sub-committee, and it is high time they realize the management of our parks requires more than planning fun events and movies in the park. We need to develop earnest policies, procedures, and carefully planned maintenance and inspection schedules.
After attending the audit at Perret Park by myself and learning what an audit is comprised of I have spent this Friday revisiting the three parks. Later today I will do another blog about the obvious hazards that were found. Some of these have been corrected because I was able to corral our part-time employee who just so happened to be spending the day at the parks and WE fixed them. Other hazards may lurk unknown because without the proper training and tools one can not check all that needs to be checked.
This city has got to have an official audit done and establish a written maintenance cycle otherwise they are setting themselves up for the probability of an unnecessary expense.