STAMFORD — The Board of Finance delved into the costs of maintaining and upgrading city playgrounds Thursday after learning that a single project was expected to cost more than $600,000.
There are 20 playgrounds in public parks across Stamford. Among them is a playground at Courtland Park on the East Side that the city has eyed for replacement for years.
Equipment on the playground has broken and been removed over time, senior parks planner Erin McKenna told the finance board, and the play area isn’t accessible to those with disabilities. The city’s plans for the park include installing new play equipment as well as a poured-in-place rubber surface, replacing engineered wood fiber.
Mary Lou Rinaldi, the board’s vice chair, argued that there must be a way to revamp playgrounds at a lower cost.
“Every park doesn’t have to have the Mercedes-level equipment,” the longtime Democratic board member said. “Why can’t it be a Chevy or a Ford? We could do a lot more.”
City engineer Lou Casolo, who also attended the board meeting, said the new play equipment at Courtland costs about $180,000, which “doesn’t seem excessive” for a 7,500-square-foot playground. The poured-in-place rubber surface is expensive, he said, but engineered wood fiber requires more maintenance.
“The fiber moves around. It rains, it moves around. Kids go down the slide, it moves around,” Casolo said. “And the parks department isn’t always there raking it back into place again, so the safety benefits of paying more for the poured-in-place (are) a good thing.”
Casolo and McKenna also noted that the costs of shipping and construction materials have increased amid the COVID-19 pandemic, making construction projects more expensive in general.
Chairman Richard Freedman and board member Geoff Alswanger, both Democrats, recommended that the city reconsider the scope of the project.
Cost increases are “all the more reason we should be looking more carefully at the scope,” Freedman said. “There are some things we can control and there are some things we can’t control. But we can certainly control the scope.”
The city took money from a number of revolving accounts dedicated to making park improvements and put it toward designing, bidding and awarding the contract for the Courtland playground project, Casolo told the board. Several months ago, the city sought approval to reallocate some of the account balance from a different, completed parks project to the diminished revolving accounts.
That’s when the $600,000-plus price tag caught the board’s eye, and it asked city officials for more information.
“Personally, I would love to see $600,000 spent on our parks. I’m just unclear that it should be $600,000 spent on this one park right now,” Alswanger said during Thursday’s meeting, adding that the project “was never represented to be at this level of cost.”
The capital budgets for the past several fiscal years indicated that the project would cost about $300,000. That was a mistake, McKenna said the day after the Board of Finance meeting.
McKenna said she provides information to the city’s parks manager, who makes the budget request. She said she made a mistake in the way she described the amount to request. The $600,000 is the correct number.
During the meeting Thursday, McKenna noted that out of about $3.3 million in funding requested for playground rehabilitation over the past nine fiscal years, only $1.16 million was approved through the budget process.
With other priorities like building a new police station and a new school, “it just seems like parks are always last on the list,” McKenna said.
Freedman said the board should have a policy discussion about how much the city should be spending on its playgrounds, which city officials said last about a couple decades.
“I’m sure the kids are going to love this playground — that’s not the question here,” Freedman said. “The question is: How about the kids in other parts of the city who are going to be playing on the same old equipment that you’re trying to replace for these children now? How much longer are they going to have to wait to get their equipment replaced if we continue with the same level of funding? So maybe the policy discussion is: We need more funding. Maybe the policy discussion is: We need to cut the cost of our playgrounds.”
About 5,600 people, including more than 700 children, live within a 10-minute walking distance of Courtland, according to a presentation McKenna gave to the board, though she said she thinks most people drive to the park. A dog park is also located at Courtland.
Republican member J.R. McMullen questioned how much the playground is actually used, saying he goes to the area often to visit a family member and never sees children in the park.
“It is used,” McKenna said. “But, as I was explaining, it’s been needing to be … replaced for about nine years.”
“I know that it would be a very well-used playground if it was restored to full function,” she added.
brianna.gurciullo@hearstmediact.com
