Upper Valley parents concerned about damaged playground posing danger to children

Parents in the Upper Valley are concerned about a local park and playground that’s become rundown over the years.

White Spur Park, also known as ‘Love Road Park’ is located in the Upper Valley along Doniphan Drive. Families have reported damage to the playground’s equipment–where parts of the park are either run down, torn up or vandalized. One photo sent to ABC-7 also shows sharp pieces of broken plastic. Parents say the damage poses a danger to children playing there.

Abc-7 spoke with Joel McKnight, the assistant director for the City of El Paso’s Parks & Recreation Department. He says he doesn’t know an exact figure for the cost of damage reported or how much it takes to repair them, but he says a broke tire swing was reported in July and everything else is due to vandalism.

“From time to time there is vandalism slash theft with a few of the mallets that are used for the musical devices, where we bang like the bells and the other thing that happens periodically throughout the year is people throwing trash and debris and not putting it in the trash,” McKnight said.

McKnight says most playground parts take at least 4-8 weeks to get in. He says the parts for the tire swing should be in by next week and once it does come in, crews will work to repair it. He adds the park doesn’t have cameras, so they call on residents to report damage.

“This really is just, since we don’t have cameras at every park, someone was out and saw an opportunity. “

As for when and how soon families can see the rest of the damage cleared up, McKnight says the park is scheduled to be cleaned in the coming weeks.

“We schedule periodically each one of our playgrounds to have replenishment done to the fall service and it’s been scheduled for about 3-4 weeks now for it to be done next week,” McKnight said.

If you have any concerns or want to report any city issues at parks or other services, you can call 311, or the city’s parks department at (915) 212-0092.

“We have more than 200, 260 parks at this time with 130 projects underway right now and so we have more than enough to watch and take care of, we’re only able to see each park roughly once a week right now because of the size and everything else so if the public sees something, let us know, don’t assume we already do.”