Saskatoon man takes playground upkeep matters into his own hands

A Saskatoon man is proving one man’s park is another man’s paradise.

Chris Fazekas has been spending most of his summer days with his children at Wilson Park in the City Park neighbourhood.

Over the past few years, Fazekas has seen the playgrounds, benches and garbage cans fall into disrepair.

After dozens of back and forth conversations with city staff in the parks and facilities departments via email and phone, Fazekas’ patience ran out, and he arranged for a delivery of five yards of sand for one of the park’s playgrounds Tuesday.

“Enough was enough,” Fazekas said at the beginning of his project. “It’s $350. I doubt I’ll ever see it again but it doesn’t matter. The point (has been) made.”

With a stack of pizza boxes, a wheel barrow, shovels and his three children, Fazekas was ready to go to work and spread out the pile of sand at his children’s favourite spot.

Fazekas warned the city he would be dumping the sand and helping fix up the playground. He was impressed by the state of the park as slides previously covered in graffiti were freshly washed, the lawn mowed and the sand recently raked.

“It comes to the point that the citizens have to make them aware when there are employees paid to do this,” Fazekas said, taking credit for the sudden action from city crews after three months of difficulties.

“It comes to putting your foot on someone’s neck, it seems to get anything done, and I don’t know why.”

In an emailed statement from the director of parks Darren Crilly, the park is one of more than 200 parks regularly inspected. He wouldn’t say if Fazekas would be facing any bylaw tickets or other consequences for backing up a truck onto the playground and dumping the sand.

“At a general level, individuals do not have permission to perform unauthorized work in city parks,” he said in the statement. “This ensures that what is placed down is correct, that no infrastructure is damaged, and that no use of the park is disrupted.”

Wilson Park recently passed its inspection with sand scheduled to be added next week.

“It just frustrates me when I get excuses,” Fazekas said. “With a $1.2 billion city budget, we can’t afford $350 for sand and an hour for someone to spread it out?
“I’m tired of asking, now I’m doing.”