Vandalism continues to plague county parks

I feel like a broken record, but the vandalism in the Knox County Parks and Recreation system has to stop. I doubt the people doing it are reading this column. I doubt they’re smart enough to read. But if you know who is doing it or have a suspicion, please report it. What’s that saying? If you see something, then say something.

These idiots keep targeting bathroom sinks, the latest one at Walker Springs Park. As Alan Simms said: “It’s not funny anymore – actually it never was funny. These things cost money and take us away from doing other, much needed work.” Alan would know. He’s the one helping to replace and install the sinks most of the time.

Now, I’m not sure this constitutes vandalism, but we had a couple of other knuckleheads run their car right through the maintenance building at Forks of the River, one of our soccer parks. Yes, somehow they were too stupid to properly stay on the road and crashed their car right into and through the building. Authorities should have charged them. I don’t know if they were going to or not. Our carpenters got out there quickly and patched up the building to secure it. Now we’re looking at prices for metal – which isn’t cheap now – and they’ll put it back to where it’s not in pieces.

It doesn’t stop there unfortunately. Our carpenters also had to go out to Admiral Farragut Park to fix concrete pads that someone ran over. This entails breaking up the remainder of the concrete and then re-pouring it. We place the memorial benches on these pads. I’m just glad the benches, which honor people, weren’t installed when the damage happened.

Richard Oglesby and Preston Littlejohn stopped by Carter Park to fix a water line, and then Preston joined the mowing crew this week. They had a ton of jobs, cutting grass at Plumb Creek, Clayton and Powell Levi parks. Our Concord Park crew finished some repair work on the trail at The Cove and removed some fallen trees at Admiral Farragut Park. A group of local skateboarders performed some volunteer work with some of the Concord Park crew on Thursday, helping them paint the skate park. That’s actually pretty cool.

Regarding the 44-mile Knox County Water Trail, we’ve had some turnover in the department, but we have a contractor out there now, removing trees near Roy Arthur Stormwater Park. We plan to move around some assignments and bring in new folks, so we should have another one of our own crews out there shortly.

On the recreation side of things, KMYFL games are proceeding as usual with flag this weekend. We have one more week of games before Fall Break, and, post-break, the final two weeks of the regular season. Playoffs are set to start the last week of October for some teams. Youth Baseball/Softball regular seasons are set to end next week. Each commission shall have a post season tournament. Adult Soccer/Softball will continue their regular seasons through the end of October. We have a weekend tournament this weekend at the SportsPark in Karns. Youth Soccer is coming to an end with AYSOs/FC Alliance having their post-season tournaments after Fall Break.

Also, we are partnering with Fierlis Entertainment to host a Trunk or Treat on October 30 from noon to 5 p.m. at John Tarleton Park. We will have more on this in the coming weeks.

Here’s a photo carousel of some of the work around the parks: