By Eric Stern
January 27th, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
Many residents have noticed that playgrounds don’t last very long in Burlington. I still visit playgrounds with one or more of my grandkids.
We live in the east end of Burlington and often walk at Bronte.
BRAG included playgrounds in the 14 concerns they had with the amount of money the city spends on these installations. Set out below is the concern BRAG had and the city response. And that seems to be all that is going to be done. There was no dialogue – just pieces of paper going back and fourth.
I’ve heard at least one council member explain that provincial legislation requires play structures to be replaced every 10 years. I couldn’t find anything for that.
The city does have a liability issue with playgrounds, children hurt themselves, and parents sue the city. The provincial legislation requires that playgrounds be regularly inspected to help mitigate this risk.
Brag asked:
So now we know.
Even though it looks like play structures are replaced every 10 years and even though Councillors were asked about the practice well before BRAG was formed. The city tells us that is not the case. Good to know.
We’d heard a rumour, from a usually reliable source, that the city employs a full-time person to design playgrounds. We asked about this as well.
Great to hear the city is “Utilizing internal expertise”, in other words, someone working for the city, but that it is not employing a full-time play structure designer.
Lost was an interesting suggestion:
Can’t the city issue an RFP and let the neighbourhood select the winning bid within a price range? We might get some interesting play structures as well.
Howard. I left out a lot of what we asked the city to keep the article readable. We did have this in our question “Extending the lifespan of play structures, where possible, may create opportunities to reallocate resources toward adding new playgrounds”. Let’s let more children play.
Let the children play ! BRAG needs to leave city operations alone. This is purely maintenance.
this would be a great “gig” for Nisan.
Playground Developer.
when he’s not out of town trying to promote his brand, or comforting the “99% of hard workers at City Hall”, he could be testing swings and slides.
Imagine …. the City spending $200k a year for someone to design monkey bars? That’s bananas, literally.
Does this person put ‘Professional Sandbox Engineer’ on their business cards?
I’m sure this person is a real visionary. After all …. one of these designers came up with … a slide with stairs?
Sounds like a dream job for a city councillor Nisan—spending all day swinging and sliding while conveniently dodging his real responsibilities. Talk about taking ‘play politics’ literally!
Wayne – I share your opinion of Roderick (aka Rory) Nisan. I believe that the job is tailor-made for our little “splash pad boy”.