Children’s playgrounds should provide an atmosphere of safety and comfort, but such is not the case with the current conditions at the City of Douglas’ Eastside Park.
A visit to Eastside this week revealed a dilapidated, littered recreational area greatly suffering from neglect.
Trash and other debris cover the landscape, combined with outdated and defective equipment that present not only a physical danger to children, but also pose a serious question of where our priorities are as a community.
The pictures published with this article were all taken Monday afternoon, Feb. 23.
This is the only swing at Eastside that at one time featured a safety device for smaller children. It sits broken and unusable.
A part of the main children’s play area at Eastside, this ‘gliding’ apparatus is missing a beam, rendering the device useless.
Discarded food wrappers, cups, and other trash at the swingset area of Eastside Park.
The basketball court at Eastside has not been utilized for its original purpose for some time. Rims of the basketball goals have not been replaced and the concrete slab suffers from years of wear and neglect. The City recently placed skateboard ramps in this area after abruptly closing its skate park on Shirley Avenue.
A purse, most likely belonging to a young girl at once, lies abandoned near the toddlers’ slide at Eastside, its contents strewn throughout the area.