Over the weekend at Blackstone Park in Mendota, a teenager was seen sitting on a basketball hoop rim after using a pavilion picnic table to climb up onto the hoop.
The incident was posted on social media, prompting Mayor Dave Boelk to address it at Monday’s city council meeting.
Boelk said the behavior poses a liability risk to the city. He said he would instruct the police department to arrest and ticket anyone caught damaging parks or engaging in reckless behavior, with fines exceeding $250.
“I’m the guy that’s got to answer for the lawsuit,” Boelk said. “I don’t need that headache. The city doesn’t need that headache.”
Boelk said he hasn’t seen behavior like this in his 26 years as mayor. He warned that repeated incidents could prompt serious action from city officials.
“We put a lot of money in our parks. We take pride in them,” he said. “I just hate seeing anything like that happen, because I am one that loses my temper and says, ‘You know what? We’ll just shut that down.’”
Mendota Police Chief Jason Martin said the department patrols parks regularly but faces competing demands.
“We always try to patrol the parks. There’s a lot of vandalism in the bathrooms and stuff like that,” Martin said. “Our guys are always trying to keep an extra eye out amongst all their other tasks that we’ve got to do at night.”
Martin agreed with Boelk on the need to prevent injury and protect public property.
“I would concur with the mayor on that. We’ll absolutely ticket them if they’re vandalizing or doing something like that,” Martin said. “Number one, we don’t want to see anybody get hurt. Number two, we don’t want some of the things that we put up for the kids and for the youth getting broke.”
Boelk expressed frustration with social media comments defending the teenagers’ behavior. He said roughly 40% of Facebook commenters thought the incident was acceptable.
“All over Facebook, a bunch of the parents and people thought that this was just all right, ‘Let kids be kids.’ I’m just fed up with it,” Boelk said. “If there’s parents out there that think that’s great, tell them to put up a basketball hoop at their house and I’ll send over all kinds of dummies like that.”
Boelk said his frustration stems partly from the financial burden on taxpayers if someone is injured.
“This is a sue-happy country, so if somebody would have fell, there would have been a lawsuit,” he said. “So I’m not into that, and I take that very seriously because the taxpayers would foot that bill if something happens.”
Despite his feelings over the weekend’s incident, Boelk said he wants kids to enjoy the parks safely.
“I would like the kids to have fun, and kids can have fun. I’m all about that, but not at the expense of our people,” he said. “There’s plenty to do. We have plenty of parks. We’re putting up new playground equipment at Strouss Park.”