I took my daughter Kathryn to the park where she wanted to play on the playground several weeks ago and I was pretty sad to see how dirty they were.
How is it that we clean up after ourselves when we go to the gym, which is all indoors, but at our parks with our kids we expect that the Parks and Rec staff will clean up after them.
So I took my daughter and some buckets and soap and started cleaning, well it was a lot bigger job than I had anticipated and so I reached out to the amazing ladies at Westcare Arizona's Hildy's House and five of them came the next morning to help.
I also contacted Dave Heath the Superintendent of Parks and Rec and he had some of his team come and pressure wash the playground equipment at Rotary Field by the soccer fields. There are soccer teams that come from all over to play on our fields and their younger children play on the playground equipment alongside our children, so we should do what we can to keep them clean for everyone.
After cleaning that playground I went and checked out the other playgrounds that we have in our parks and they were pretty dirty as well. So I thought what a great way to clean up and also highlight some amazing businesses in our town. So we had a Competition for Community.
Two amazing companies in our town COIT (928-704-9100)and 1st Call Restoration (928-704-0002) who normally compete for the same customers, put all of that aside and came together to clean up the two jungle gyms at Ken Fovargue Park.
The Bullhead City Fire Department along with the Bullhead City Police Department also came by to show their support. There were a couple community members as well.
What I thought would take a couple hours took less than one hour. Each of these companies brought about 5-6 of their employees and they just knocked it out.
Dave Heath was even there scrubbing alongside everyone. He said that it hasn't been this clean in 20 years! It was a great morning of putting community over competition.
Since the park equipment is all clean now I noticed that the paint has really oxidized and is very faded.
Kirk Tracy (of Kid and Nic) works for an amazing company called City Restore Inc. and his company restores paint on heavy equipment like tractors, school buses etc. when I saw what it could do for those I asked him if he thought it might work on our playground equipment. He said he thought that it would and so he went with Dave Heath and they did a test area, and IT WORKED! So the company that Kirk works for will be donating the materials and Kirk will be donating his time so that our playground equipment will look clean and restored.
I love the quote by President John Kennedy "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." If we all put in a little more effort to keep our town clean instead of thinking that it is someone else's job it would free up a lot more time for our amazing Parks and Rec staff who should be doing more important things that picking up after people that leave their trash behind or don't clean up after themselves.
If you have any ideas of how we could make a sustainable cleaning station for the playground equipment so that we can clean up after our children play I would love to hear your ideas.
"Together we Make Bullhead Better"