When it comes to the City of Peekskill’s 15-plus parks, each resident likely has their own wish list of improvements they’d like to see.
For Suzane Guyonn, a mother watching her child play at the Riverfront Green Park playground on a sunny day, that wish list includes more shade. But overall, the park experience is positive, she told the Peekskill Herald.
“What I like about the park [is that] Peekskill is a really tight-knit community,” Guyonn said. “All these kids are getting along and sharing, and all the parents are getting along and sharing as well. What I don’t like is they could clean up the area a little bit more often and possibly patch up the rubberized mats.”
Kenneth Mighty, a father at Depew Park, told the Herald that playgrounds at Franklin Park and Tompkins Park have not seen renovations since he was a child and he would like to see new work done. His petition to build a calisthenics park at Riverfront Green has 167 signatures as of this writing.
John F, a father at Depew Park who did not want to give his full surname, said he would like a more accessible playground but overall commented favorably on the recreation facility.
“We love the track here, especially having one of our kids in a wheelchair,” John said. “It’s a nice place to come down and go on a walk together as a family. We like having the playground right there. The park does have some signs of aging, but overall, we’re happy to have this here.”
While playground equipment at Franklin Park was partially covered in graffiti on June 2, two mothers told the Herald seeing graffiti at the park is rare and that it is generally well-maintained by the city.
One mother, Maria Lopez, claimed that “poop” found at the top of a slide on the Franklin Park playground was left unattended for over a week. Another mother chimed in on social media that, as a result, her daughter got dirty going down the soiled slide.
A mother at Franklin Park who asked not to be named said that the accident, which she believed was by a child who could not hold it in, could have been prevented if there were bathrooms or Porta Pottys at the park.
“Realistically, can you even blame the kids at this point? There is no bathroom here,” she said. “The park has been here for years. There’s nowhere for the kids to use the bathroom. They’re young; not all kids can hold it.”
A request asking when a report was made to the Department of Public Works (DPW) about the incident and when the slide was cleaned was not responded to as of this writing.
Maintenance is no walk in the park
Among several residents and parents across several parks interviewed by the Herald, a common theme was upkeep of parks, including litter pickup, graffiti removal, and equipment maintenance.
Park upkeep is generally handled by the DPW, but the Parks & Recreation Department partially has a hand in it as well, working closely with the parks foreman, and running the pool at Depew Park.
Community Hub Director Johnathan Zamora, who oversees Parks & Recreation, told the Herald he was not authorized to comment. Several questions sent to him were not responded to as of this writing.
Asked what goes into maintaining parks that residents might not know, Director of Public Works Christopher Gross said, “Most residents don’t realize how many parks we have. There are over 15 parks that we maintain. Most people are thinking, ‘Okay, well, it’s just Depew Park, Riverfront, Franklin Park, and a handful of these, the stadium, the big ones… Although we’ve added a number of parks to it, we really haven’t been able to increase staff too much.”
The department has about seven staff dedicated to park maintenance, a number it looks to immediately increase by two, Gross said. But if not for budget constraints, that number would be increased by a lot more, he said. The staff picks up litter almost every day, Monday through Friday, as well as on the weekend, he said.
“If it’s an emergency, we can get out there, we can pull somebody in as an emergency if it’s after hours, if we have to drop what we’re doing to go take care of it,” Gross said. “Graffiti [is something] we’re going to try to get to the next day because we don’t want to have the graffiti on the equipment too long. Do we always get to it the next day? No, but we try to get to it as fast as we can.”
In addition to volunteer groups like Peekskill Walks that host clean-up events, the city also sponsors its own volunteer events, such as a recent cleanup at Peekskill Dog Park.
Sahar Moin, a Peekskill resident and landscape architect for a firm in New York City, told the Herald about the process behind park designs and interaction with the park-going public, which may have different priorities from one another.
“What’s important to me is not necessarily important to my neighbor,” Moin said. “So I think that’s another kind of balancing act that parks departments and cities and landscape architects as designers have to demonstrate to people. We can’t give everyone every single thing, but we can do our best to do it in a democratic fashion [and] address underlying issues.”
She also spoke about the maintenance that residents do not see.
“There’s a lot of unseen things that need to be taken care of in a park, like drainage,” Moin said. “Or in a park like Depew, management of invasives or things like that, or utility stuff. And those things cost money but don’t necessarily have an on-the-ground impact that people realize. But other people are aware and can see the effects of things, like poor drainage.”
