Wave of vandalism targets Lisbon splash pad

LISBON - For a town of about 2,100 people on the eastern edge of Linn County, Lisbon boasts a crown jewel of a city park.

It has baseball and soccer fields and a playground that can handle the fluttering attention span of a toddler.

This year, the city installed a new splash pad, one that took much planning and fundraising.

'We worked extremely hard, a lot of man-hours, a lot of volunteer hours and donations for the splash pad,” said Connie Meier, Lisbon's city administrator.

Yet Meier and other city leaders are dealing with recent vandalism at the city park, where the damage ranges from nuisances, such as tearing the paper out of the restrooms, to more serious infractions, such as dumping rocks into the splash pad and adjacent wading pool.

'People are dumping (items) in the new swimming pool, the splash pad area, mud, riding scooters in the splash pad, which all takes a lot of cleanup. So we have our maintenance guys out several times during the weekend to clean up the mess,” said Meier. 'Most of it is happening later in the evening or the early evening and older kids are in the park and not supervised by their parents.”

The splash pad opened toward the end of summer, after numerous fundraisers throughout the Mount Vernon and Lisbon region.

The splash pad is closed for the season.

Meier said one option might be to install surveillance to keep watch over the area that has been a target in recent weeks.

'We are looking into getting cameras set up at the park so we can have an idea of what's going on when the police can't be there,” Meier said.