Julie Hannon, director of Vancouver’s park department, has an idea of how to improve the city’s parks without costing taxpayers a dime: Stop the vandalism.
On a recent afternoon, Hannon pointed to trouble spots at Marine Park on the Columbia River.
She was barely out of her car before she spotted black circles from hot-rodders all over the parking lot. She took a couple of more steps and noted an empty wine bottle in the brush and crumpled trash on the ground. Hannon walked down to the beach and look frustrated when she noticed remnants of a wooden dresser that appeared to have helped someone start an illegal fire on the beach.
“Who brings a dresser down to the beach to burn it?” Hannon said.
The city of Vancouver has 90 parks, stretching nearly 650 acres. Every Monday, Hannon’s maintenance crew spends the bulk of the day cleaning up from the weekend.
“We’ve been hit really hard recently,” she said.
Hannon got back in her car and drove a short distance to another spot in the same park.
“People need to take responsibility for their parks,” Hannon said, estimating the park department’s staff spends 30 percent of its time dealing with vandalism and graffiti. If the crew had more time to focus on upgrades and maintenance, she said, “the parks could look 30 percent nicer.”
At the second stop, she pointed to trees missing branches. It’s clear where they’ve gone: mounds of sand and charcoal dot the beach. Fires aren’t allowed, but that isn’t stopping some.
“This is a sensitive environmental area,” she said.
The picnic table is scarred with carved initials. A yellow Frito-Lay bag is on the sand, beer bottles perched on a log. Huge boulders that park staff placed to prohibit people from driving on the beach have been pushed out of the way.
Hannon looked around.
“We just can’t catch up. … The amount of money we could spend to improve things, we spend cleaning, removing graffiti, replacing damaged equipment,” she said.
Hollie Peterson was spending time in Marine Park with her three kids on the same afternoon.
Peterson’s daughter, Alexis, 6, was playing in the water and summed up why she enjoys spending time in the park.
“I like beaches, you can swim, you can play with sand,” she said.
And when she was asked about how she feels when she sees trash and graffiti marring the park, she summed that up well, too.
“I don’t like it … because it’s rude,” she said.
