GEORGETOWN, Ky. (LEX 18) — The playground equipment in each of Georgetown’s city parks is inspected on a yearly basis, but parents and guardians recently asked city officials to take a closer look at Ed Davis Park.
“We came out, three or four of us yesterday, to check for safety and to make sure there were no entrapment concerns,” said Drew Beckett, the new director of the Georgetown-Scott County Parks and Recreation Department.
Tools were used to see if an average-sized child’s head or neck could get stuck in certain areas, and there were some spots where it was determined that could, in fact, happen. Other areas just weren’t as steady as inspectors would have liked, so one-half of the playground was shut down immediately after being declared a “level-1 hazard.”
Community members were notified about the closure on social media, and the remaining equipment that was deemed safe after being inspected will remain open.
The hazardous equipment here won’t be fixed or altered to be made safe. It’ll all be replaced, eventually. The city is closing in on securing a grant to cover a portion of the $500,000 project that’s been in the works for years that’ll rebuild the entire playground on a different spot inside Ed Davis Park.
“We’re working with Frankfort – hopefully this week or in the next few weeks – to finalize that so they can release that part of the funding to us,” Beckett said. “The equipment is already on order waiting for us in a warehouse,” Mr. Beckett continued.
Beckett is one week into his new role as Parks and Recreation Director, four months after the previous director, Kimberly Rice, was dismissed. He wasn’t expecting to have to shut down 50% of own of his playgrounds in the middle of the summer, but nipping this in the bud, he knows, was the right move, even though the city didn’t receive any reports of injury stemming from the hazardous equipment.
“Definitely some areas that needed to not be open to the public any longer,” he said.
And now, those have been closed.
