Citing the discovery of glass “placed strategically” around the Linwood playground, Linwood recreation service board chair Lori Sebben asked township staff and councillors to consider options for video surveillance.
At the township committee meeting Tuesday night, Sebben said that the playground’s relatively sheltered, remote location makes it more vulnerable to safety issues.
“I understand that you want to wait until you can do them all together,” said Sebben of video surveillance of the township’s playgrounds. “But seeing as it’s such a private area, it would be really beneficial to have something back there.”
Director of facilities Brad Voisin said that video surveillance would represented a heavy workload, noting that the township is implementing a new strategy for monitoring playground safety. Instead of a daily, year-round staff walk-by, staff will be given a complete checklist of safety conditions to meet. “Which is going to be time-consuming and cost money, but we can’t have glass in our playgrounds.”
Coun. Herb Neher suggested not all playgrounds are equal priority. “Some of these playgrounds, you may not need [surveillance] because they’re out in an exposed area. … Just because we’re going to have one there doesn’t mean we have to have one at every single location.”
Considering options, Voisin said, “I was researching getting something portable that we could move around from problem area to problem area. … We do have playgrounds that are more secluded, but we don’t even have hydro near them, so we couldn’t do it anyway.”
He added that staff would look into pricing for video surveillance options.
