Harlingen parks and rec board wrestles with re-opening rules

HARLINGEN — The city’s Parks and Recreation Department board is discussing how to safely re-open the city’s parks following the governor’s declaration to end pandemic-related restrictions.

Javier Mendez, parks director, told the board at a meeting last week that Mayor Chris Boswell had recommended the board come up with protocols to safely allow kids and their parents back onto city playgrounds.

“I just wanted to summarize everything I put together on this re-opening plan, and that  was the staff would go out and initially clean all the playgrounds with soap and water because that’s what the CDC guidelines or recommendations are,” Mendez told the board. “If you wash them down with soap and water and then from there on we can disinfect them with a chemical that we use on our electrostatic equipment.”

Mendez said his plan, stressing it was merely a draft at this point, would then have parks and rec personnel close each playground for 15 minutes on the afternoon to disinfect them again.

“We’ll have sanitizing stations at each playground as soon as you walk in, and it will have all the rules that you need to abide by, and then will have the sanitizing station, the hand-sanitizer station, at each entrance,” he said.

Mendez said admittance to the playgrounds would be limited to one-third capacity, and the number would be posted on signage at each playground. Masks would still be required.

One board member, Abel Castaneda, questioned just how the parks and rec department would enforce the rules.

“As far as that, are the police going to police that?” he asked. “Are they going to address it when they see something? Because I’ve talked to some of them and they don’t care. It’s like, ‘I’m not going to enforce anything.’”

“A lot of it is self-enforcement, Abel,” Mendez said. “It’s going to be difficult for us all if we see people engaged too close or not wearing their mask or whatever. It’s going to be tough for us to enforce a lot of these.”

“We’re going to have to depend on their parents, the adults, for them to self-enforce,” Mendez said.

Board member Diana Esparza said she was confident adults supervising the kids at playgrounds will do the right thing.

“It’s up to the parents to do what’s best for those children,” she said. “If I have a child and I take him to the playground, I’m going to make sure they follow the guidelines and going strictly by what has to be done for our own good.”

The board set no timetable for coming up with rules to re-open the parks, and Mendez said a final rules recommendation would then go to the city for approval.

“This is a draft and what we’ll want to do is submit it to our health director, the health authority, and then of course ultimately the mayor and he has to sign off on it and approve it,” Mendez said. “He would kind of tell us when he wants to open up the parks.”

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