In yesterday’s (March 15, 2006) Newburyport Daily News there is an article regarding the Brown School playground. It seems that the neighbors of the playground have a problem with people (other than the Brown School students) using the playground. They claim that too many teenagers and older people hang out there, they complain that it is noisy and that there is a drug problem there.
Yes, teenagers and older people hang out there. There are basketball courts on site, which is why they hang out there (they certainly aren’t there to swing on the swing sets). The playground is city property, open to the public after school hours. They have every right to be there, it is after all, a playground. Some neighbors say they would like to see the older kids kept out of the playground. If this is because they are scared of having teenagers around, then that is blatant discrimination. You can’t say that one group of people should be allowed to use the park, while another is not. In yesterday’s paper, another issue raised is that the park brings older kids from other parts of town, as if the park should be exclusive to only those in the south end.
What really gets me about this issue is that the people with complaints knowingly bought a house next to a playground. What did they expect? When the original story broke last fall, one of the neighbors was quoted as having just moved there in the past 6 months and didn’t like the amount of activity that was taking place there. Well, those 6 months happened to be the spring/summer months, and when the weather is good, the kids want to use the park. Honestly, what did they expect when they bought their house? I hate to have to say it, but if you didn’t want a bunch of kids playing nearby, you shouldn’t have moved there.
As for the drug issue, the police regularly patrol the park and have yet to find any drug related problems. The simple truth is, whether or not there are drugs, you can’t exclude an entire group of people because you “think” they are doing something wrong. For every kid that might have drugs, there are plenty that don’t and they shouldn’t be allowed to use the park because some neighbor doesn’t want them too? I like to go down there occasionally on the weekend and shoot a basketball, maybe play a pick up game, and certainly don’t have any drugs on me, so why shouldn’t I be allowed to do so?
What it boils down to, from what I’ve read and seen, is that the neighbors, some of whom are new to town, don’t want this in their backyard, but I’m sorry, the park has been there for a long time and it isn’t an exclusive club, so you have to allow everyone to use it. Could the kids that hang out there find somewhere else to go? Not likely, they don’t call it “Nothing-to-do-buryport” for nothing, and I’ll tell you first hand from someone that grew up here, it seems no one wants kids around. They don’t want them hanging out downtown, they don’t want them hanging out on the waterfront, they don’t want them hanging out at the Brown School. It was a miracle to even get a skate park built in town, and even that has restrictions on it. So how do you solve the problem? Closing the park at 5:30 isn’t the answer (it is sunny in the summer until 8 o’clock) and excluding everyone over the age of 13 isn’t fair. So I say the neighbors have two options, learn to live with the situation, with the help of regular police patrols, or move somewhere that isn’t located next to a city park.
Ben Laing, Newburyport