Parks users: Make sure our views are heard

LYNN – Watching her son laugh and dash through water jets on a hot June day, Sarah Dacruz called Flax Pond playground?s splash pad “the best park in the city,”She quickly added: “It?s the only best park.”Dacruz? opinion, to varying degrees, mirrors park users? views across Lynn who welcome the city?s plan to spruce up a dozen parks but think city officials need to do a better job listening to residents? views on improving local open space.City officials plan to spend some of the money from $4 million in borrowing approved last winter by Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy and the City Council, to fix up parks and playgrounds including Magnolia Avenue, Sheridan Street, Sagamore Street, Frey, Barry, the play area near Callahan School, Gallagher, Clark Street and Cook Street.McManus Field behind Lynn Vocational Technical Institute is slated for $800,000 work alone, including a plan to add a splash pad similar to Flax Pond?s next to the field.?The nuts and bolts work should start in September,” said Community Development Director James Marsh.Lynn Common is also slated for improvements and people who use the park, like Francisca Flores and her husband, Arturo, say the work is overdue. Stretching across the city?s center and filled with mature trees and sun-drenched lawns fringed by park benches and walkways, the Common attracts residents from surrounding neighborhoods.?It?s close and it?s a great area. You can come into it from every point of the city,” said Flores.The couple walk their dogs in the common regularly and enjoy watching soccer players like Jubentino Lopez, a Guatemalan native, who said the common?s central location typically attracts enough players after 6 p.m. each summer weekday evening to form three teams.?People play here every day,” he said.Lopez wishes the city would smooth out the common?s lawns so players can avoid stepping in holes and provide goal nets to replace the trash barrels the teams use as goals.Pointing to a June health fair common, Flores said the city has stepped up efforts to highlight the Common as a family gathering place. She said the Police Department discourages public drinking in the Commons but wants to see a children?s water play area, like the Flax splash pad, added to the Common.Acting Associate Public Works Commissioner Lisa Nerich said the city must keep parks and playgrounds maintained and safe for residents to use even as plans unfold to upgrade and improve the city?s open space areas.?I want equipment that is safe for children and make sure there is plenty of mulch under play structures,” she said.A 25-year city employee who started her career as a Frey Playground instructor, Nerich said the upkeep work begins in the spring, when ballfields at Gallagher, Keaney, McManus and Barry fields are prepared for baseball and softball teams.As summer approaches, the maintenance work shifts to playgrounds and continues through the hot months, when Nerich said city-run programs attract more than 500 children to local playgrounds.?We?ve got to remove graffiti, repair broken equipment as well as empty trash barrels three times a week. People want equipment that works. If they see things broken, it?s important they call us,” Nerich said.A 2008 city maps lists almost three dozen spots across Lynn where people can play and relax. They range from what Nerich calls the city?s “gems” – Lynn Woods, Gannon Municipal Golf Course and Manning and Fraser fields – to parks with ballfields used by school and park leagues to playgrounds tucked away on side streets like River and Smith streets.It is listed on the city map as a playground but Nerich describes River Street as “an open space field.” A drive over to its corner in West Lynn reveals River Street as a concrete parking lot bordered by a rutted asphalt lane.Hard by the commuter rail tracks in East Lynn, Smith Street playground has a half-court basketball court frequented by kids who would like to see the court expanded and lit up at night.The city cleaned up