Melrose Playgrounds: How Safe?

This is the first article in a three-part series. Part two will run on Wednesday and part three will run on Thursday.

It's finally spring in Melrose. For many of the city's children and parents, this means a return to a regular playground-visiting schedule. However, some Melrose playgrounds look like they could use more than a little spring cleaning.

The playground at has seen better days, with the wooden stairs warped and slightly rotted, a makeshift plywood repair visible on one stair. Rust has eaten away at some of the metal on the climbing and slide structure, leaving jagged edges that could pose a painful accident for an unlucky child.

Many of the city's other playgrounds look much better. Beside a bit of rust on swing hooks and an example of tasteless graffiti rather tastefully located on the underside of the tall slide, the playground at the appear fine. The playground shows signs of fairly recent improvements, as does equipment at a few others.

Yet some Melrose parents feel that still more improvements are necessary. Among the several parents interviewed for this article, many stated that while Melrose offers an excellent variety of playgrounds with equipment that is usually in good repair, some changes are needed. One parent highlighted the ubiquitous rabbit droppings found around , as well as a lack of toddler-safe railings on higher play structures around the city. Another parent noted the absence of self-locking gates and the perennial problem of offensive graffiti scrawled in plain sight.

Checking these problems falls under the responsibility of the , headed by Joan Bell, Superintendent of Mount Hood and Public Open Space. Although the Park Department has maintained a playground maintenance checklist for years, Bell also became a Certified Playground Safety Inspector (CPSI)―through an exam offered by the National Certification Board in coordination with the National Park and Recreation Association and the National Playground Safety Institute―in January.

The certification is good for three years and will expire on February 1, 2014. (A check of nearby towns in the National CPSI Registry reveals that Melrose's certification is the exception to the rule, at least locally. There are no certified inspectors listed within the registry for Stoneham, Medford, Malden, Wakefield or Saugus. However, the registry does show one certified inspector in both Woburn and Somerville.)

Bell predicts that the CPSI certification course she took will give her a new, "interesting" perspective on the city's many playgrounds, many of which are right now being inspected and prepped for a busy spring season.

"You do two different things," Bell explained of her responsibilities as an inspector. "You do an audit first, to make sure you meet all the criteria. From there you do your safety checklist: Make sure the S-hooks [on swings] are right, the swings are the right distance off the ground, there are no protrusions, etc."

Bell indicated that employees within the Park Department and have already begun identifying equipment that may need to be replaced or updated, noting that the early spring's unseasonable weather hampered the process a bit.

"In the spring, we review and see what needs to be replaced. We make sure there are no protrusions. We try to get orders in early, so when mid-April or the end of April hits, repairs are done," Bell said.

Once spring maintenance is considered complete, the playground checks become less frequent.

"We go through them on a monthly basis or when people call us. People who are in the parks might call to say, 'We have a broken swing,' or 'There's a slide with a hole in it.'" Bell said.

GTA Landscaping, an outside company under contract with the city, takes care of seasonal mowing and maintenance (including mulching and litter control in parks). When residents call in playground problems to the Park Department during the summer, Bell and her staff coordinate repairs with the DPW.

"We don't do a lot maintenance," Bob Beshara, City Engineer and Superintendent of Public Works, said. "We come in when there's damage."