Sutton municipal park restrictions frustrate residents
The town of Sutton recently announced that the Goyette-hill Park chalet will be off-limits to residents from June 28 to Aug. 22, as the local day camp overtook the facility to accommodate 95 children on Monday.
While the surrounding park area will be open to everyone, the town also placed tempo tents — giant, gazebolike fixtures — in the dek hockey rink. And they blocked off a two-hour period, between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., at the public swimming pool for day camp users during the week.
The sudden decision has left many residents, mainly parents with young children, disgruntled and confused by the lack of communication from the town’s municipal council. Caitlin Levesque-pegg said the facility was open last summer at the peak of the pandemic.
“It’s the fact that we don’t have access to somewhere that is shaded to be able to change, so we’re going to end up doing the towel in the corner and changing our kids outside from their wet bathing suits or vice versa,” she said.
Levesque-pegg has a four-year-old daughter who enjoys swimming in the summer. She noticed a schedule change at the pool on Saturday. Levesquepegg expected to bring her daughter swimming at noon, but it was booked up for adults lap swim.
The online schedule had not been updated at the time. And although she lives a short drive away from the pool, she decided to wait outside for an hour before entering the swimming area. There is no place to cool down, she said, or to escape the sun’s glare.
“I understand that we need to accommodate other groups, so these kids from the day camp do need shade and I understand they need some space that is cool, but I just feel like there is a compromise that we could find,” said Levesque-pegg.
The Sutton mother was one of many residents to join a chorus of complaints on the Sutton Locals Facebook page. She told The Record that there needs to be a way to make the space available for everyone in the town. Last year, certain lockers were reserved for camp users.
The chalet has bathrooms, lockers and changing rooms for boys and girls. It will be strictly off-limits to nonday camp users. Resident cannot use it even on weekends. There are two public bathrooms outside, according to Levesque-pegg, but it is a small consolation.
Jasmine Lynn has lived in Sutton her entire life, and this is the first time she has seen the day camp take over the park. Normally, it is located at the Sutton School. However, the town has stated that the school is currently undergoing renovations.
“The thing is I understand, sure, fine, if you are doing renovations, you know, the kids aren’t allowed to be in the school, however, the field in the back, you know, they are setting up tents in technically what I feel is an area where they shouldn’t be,” said Lynn.
Lynn has a three-year-old nephew, and she often takes him to the dek hockey rink. But she won’t be able to do that this summer. Lynn said she brings her nephew to the park at least twice a week during the day. She believes the town should have consulted its residents.
“It was kind of shifty how they went about it because I’m sure that if they would have put out a call to the town’s people […] I absolutely know it would have gone a lot differently, a lot more people would have protested it,” said Lynn.
She doesn’t know how to break the news to her nephew. And although the pool is open on weekends, free swim is from 1 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., she told The Record that residents typically avoid going out on Saturday and Sunday due to the massive amount of visitors.
According to Sutton Mayor Michel Lafrance, the decision was mostly based on the current pandemic situation, but also the lack of resources. They have struggled to hire staff members at the swimming pool. And the dek rink was the best option for the tempo tents.
“Well, there comes a point where we were elected to make decisions, so if you start consulting everybody then you accumulate delays, and so we had to act very promptly to make sure we got our camp off the ground on proper footing so we made the decision,” said Lafrance.
It is never black and white, he continued, adding that the town council will never be able to please everybody in this type of situation. But he firmly believes that this was the best decision for Sutton. The pool, for example, is limited to camp users for two hours to respect ratios.
There were three options for the tempo tents: the skate park, tennis courts and the dek hockey rink. They chose to use the rink because the skate park turned out to be too small, and they deemed the tennis courts would be too dangerous for the children.
He also addressed what he called “aggressive comments” on Facebook direct towards the town’s council. Lafrance is trying to keep the morale up in the town. He believes the comments were unwarranted and lacked research, so he decided to stand up for his colleagues.
“Public officers are an easy target because they can’t respond and I felt as an elected official I had to speak for them. We don’t need this at this time of year, so I had to defend our rights […] to make sure to let people know to be more tolerant,” said Lafrance.