City cut ties in June 2005 to school district’s maintenance agreement

Citing safety and liability concerns, the city of Corvallis tried to sever its ties to Wildcat Park seven months before Corvallis School District officials closed the popular playground at Wilson School.

Public records show that on June 7, 2005, the city, the district’s partner in maintaining Wildcat Park, gave the mandatory 90 days notice that it was terminating the Wildcat Park Agreement, stipulating terms under which a new agreement could be reached.

In a letter from Corvallis Parks Operation Supervisor Steve DeGhetto to the district’s facility services director, the city said the district had not maintained Wildcat Park to safety standards, exposing the city to risk by continuing the agreement.

DeGhetto noted that maintenance records could not be found and the district’s inspections didn’t meet the city’s standards for risk reduction. The agreement, signed when the park was built in 1989, called for the city to maintain the park when school is not in session and the district was charged with upkeep during the school year.

In August, the district responded to the city by asking for more time to comply.

But an extension wasn’t granted. Instead, the city gave the district its final safety audit in August, noting many of the same things that were repeated in a report by a certified playground inspector hired by the district to evaluate Wildcat Park in November.

DeGhetto said the city’s position wasn’t that the district should close Wildcat last summer.

“This is about protecting children, pure and simple,” he said.

The concerns brought to the district’s attention last summer dealt mostly with maintenance issues, things that could be done immediately, with minimal cost or effort, to protect children from injury.

While there have been no serious injuries reported at Wildcat Park, the district on Jan. 6 closed the play structure, saying it was being “proactive” by responding to the auditor’s report.

In a press release about the park’s closure, the district described its “gallant attempts” to maintain a safe structure for children.

Further, the district told parents at Wilson School, where Wildcat Park served as a playground, that safety inspections have been ongoing.

“All school district playgrounds are inspected monthly for safety issues,” a press release about Wildcat’s closure claimed, and visual checks were done daily at Wildcat, the principal assured parents.

But a check of playground inspection records at the district’s maintenance department turned up only two written inspection forms for Wilson School in the last two years. In fact, there were just four reports total in the Wilson folder, and one was from 1998. When asked about the missing reports, facilities officials said the required forms must not have been completed by campus stewards or head custodians.

It’s a similar situation at most of Corvallis public elementary schools, officials said.

Minimally, most playgrounds are inspected once or twice a year by facilities grounds workers.

No one in the district is trained to inspect playgrounds based on the Consumer Product Safety Commission standards or ASTM, one of the largest voluntary standards development organizations in the world. And at least one Corvallis student has been seriously injured at a play structure that was installed incorrectly at Mountain View Elementary School. Additional details about the incident were not provided by the district.

A lack of safety oversight by the district was one of the reasons given by the city in severing its agreement for Wildcat Park, said DeGhetto.

“I don’t think guidelines are out there just because we want to keep the lawyers out of the mix. Nobody wants to deal with a child being hurt or injured because something was not watched,” DeGhetto said.

“As a taxpayer and a parent, if there’s a set of standards, why aren’t we using them?”

In the August safety audit of Wildcat Park, the city’s certified playground inspector pointed out three “very critical items”: A collapsed platform at the end of the monkey bars, collapsing rails and fences, and insecure parallel bars. Other maintenance items noted in that report were the need to close “s” hooks that attach swings to chains, rotten or missing boards, splintering wood, protruding nails and missing ground cover that could protect a child from serious injury in a fall.

Although the city’s safety audit was delivered to the district’s maintenance office, facilities director Fred Wright said he never received it.

Grounds crews did the normal summer maintenance at Wildcat last summer, replacing ground cover and damaged or missing boards.

As recommended by the city, the district hired a playground safety expert to evaluate Wildcat.

That report concluded the problems at Wildcat Park could not be fixed, although that finding has been questioned by the playground’s architect, Leathers & Associates.

Based on what it learned at Wildcat, district officials have called for safety audits at all Corvallis elementary school playgrounds. The district is again working with Corvallis Parks & Recreation Department to evaluate play facilities, and the board is considering spending money left over from the facilities bond measure to repair or replace unsafe play equipment.

“The city has graciously been assisting us in doing those audits,” Wright said.

Additionally, the district’s risk management department has offered to pay for district employees to be trained to do playground safety inspections.

“There’s a course that we’ll be sending two of our staff to next year,” Wright said.

Rebecca Barrett covers public policy and education for the Gazette-Times. She can be reached at rebecca.barrett@lee.net or

758-9510.