ST. LOUIS 鈥 The city parks department is looking for some new ways to deal with a costly problem: People keep tearing up the bathrooms.
At parks across the city, people have smashed locks and shot them off of doors. They have broken in and stolen the copper piping and stainless steel fixtures. They have drawn graffiti or smeared feces on the walls.
鈥淓very day,鈥 Parks Commissioner Kimberly Haegele told aldermen at a recent committee hearing, 鈥渟omeone is reporting something.鈥
In some ways, it鈥檚 just another challenge for a city parks system that struggles with dilapidated infrastructure, has more parks than employees, and serves communities wracked by poverty and crime. Swings go missing. Slides crack. Broken equipment injures people.
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Problems with bathrooms and vandalism date back decades. In the mid-1960s, police put some bathrooms under surveillance amid concerns people were using them to sell drugs or gamble. In the 1980s, the parks department said it was spending $80,000 to $90,000 to repair damage caused by vandals in restrooms and elsewhere 鈥 and would spent a lot more if the city could afford it.
The extent of the threat to bathrooms today is not entirely clear. Data from the city鈥檚 Citizens鈥 Service Bureau show at least 16 instances so far this year where a complaint was made about a park restroom needing maintenance or cleaning that resulted in closure or repairs being made. But not every instance of vandalism is reported in that way, city officials said.
Regardless, the costs are manifold:
The wrecked bathrooms must be closed for repairs, so parkgoers have nowhere to, well, go.
The facilities can be out of service for a while 鈥 the city has more than 100 parks but just two plumbers.
And when the workers do get around to it, repairs can run many thousands of dollars.
So this winter, the parks department is going to put its welding shop to work smithing some metal gates to be installed in the entryways outside its wooden doors, Haegele said.
The gates could be left open during the day, when parks are open, but then locked up at night to guard the wooden doors.
Haegele said the department would start with the parks that get the most trouble, including Carondelet Park on the far south side, McDonald Park in Tower Grove South and Gregory Carter Park on the north side.
The department is also replacing stolen copper pipes with plastic and planning to make signs for doors that say 鈥淣o Copper Piping,鈥 鈥淥nly Plastic Piping鈥 or something similar.
Hopefully, Haegele said, would-be vandals will decide it isn鈥檛 worth it.
The department has other methods, too. A closed comfort station in Carondelet Park is having its doors reworked so they open outward rather than inward. That should make it harder for vandals to push them in, Haegele said.
鈥淚t鈥檚 us trying to outwit the vandals is what it comes down to,鈥 she told aldermen.