OGDEN — Ogden’s goals of becoming a recreation-friendly city come with challenges that are both old and new, but leaders are looking at innovative ways to keep up the momentum.

Vandalism

Almost as long as public works projects have been a thing, the temptation of some in society to leave their destructive mark on them has proven too great.

Ogden City Parks and Cemetery Division Manager Monte Stewart said that vandalism remains a problem in the city’s parks to the point that some employees almost exclusively work to fix it.

“We have a full-time employee that 95% of what he does is graffiti removal,” he said. “Many years ago, a position was funded to help with playground inspections, trail work and it morphed over the last 17-18 years into solely that’s what he does. It’s sad. We have to bolster him and pull another employee to help.”

Ogden Mayor Ben Nadolski said vandalism has hardly been limited to graffiti.

“We are constantly asked for bathrooms at parks, which we want people to have access too, especially for families,” he said. “And everywhere that we do, they are vandalized and damaged to the point of being inoperable. Then you’ve got to shut it down, order new parts, fix it and everything. It’s constant.”

Stewart said it’s a nearly daily struggle.

“9th Street Park, we put in a new restroom, playground, pavilion there,” he said. “I was just there a couple days ago and this was like the third time in a year that the picnic table is just smashed. They got up on it and just smashed it. There’s $1,200 of taxpayer money.”

Nadolski said the city has taken to showing pictures of the damage at public meetings.

“It’s just this really small number of people that are really hurting the opportunities and investments of the many,” he said. “We’ve had instances where we’ve actually found the offenders and we’ve brought them to justice.”

He said it’s a direct approach to crime reduction that will ultimately help drive down vandalism in the city’s parks.

“The ultimate solution is to remove that criminal element from our city,” he said. “We’re unapologetically going after the criminal element of our community because it affects us in more ways than people recognize. This is just another one of those symptoms of that. We’re not the same city of crime that we used to be, but it doesn’t mean it’s gone completely and it probably never will be.”

Stewart noted that this isn’t a problem that’s new to Ogden parks.

“Our City Recorder has found a bunch of historical documents from Lester Park in the early part of the 1900s and they were dealing with similar issues, which blew my mind,” he said. “It was 1903 and there was an article that they were dealing with vagrants and unruly young men that were driving their carriages spinning through the park.”

Access

Making sure people have access to quality recreation has also long been a challenge.

Ogden City Recreation Director Edd Bridge said they’ve been working on ways to bring activities to where the people are.

“We know transportation is a big issue in Ogden,” he said. “We just purchased a church on the north end of town to be able to bring programming into the north end of town to make it so people have access they can walk to.”

Another way the city has been trying to expand access to recreational opportunities is the rebuilding of the Marshall N. White Community Center.

Bridge said the first few months in the new facility have gone well.

“We’ve been very happy with our memberships,” he said. “Really happy with the youth. It’s really exciting what the administration and council has passed so that youth can go there for free if they qualify or participate in the programs for free if they qualify. That’s invaluable to us. We’ve had over 100 kids apply for that and qualify. That’s fantastic. We’ve also had companies step up and make it possible that kids can get swim lessons for free.”

But do today’s youth still want to take part in parks and recreation?

An emerging stereotype of modern youths is that they can’t separate themselves from electronic devices and gaming in a way that allows for these activities.

However, Stewart recently made an observation on the state of park popularity in Ogden.

(Tuesday) night, I had a late meeting and then I had to get back to the office and get some stuff done,” he said. “It was 7:30 and I was headed home and I thought I want to swing by one of our parks. … It was buzzing. It was Rolling Hills Park, buzzing. … It was neat to see they do get used.”