Trash, clutter shutters Lodi’s Kofu Skate Park
City officials unsure when park might be reopened
Due to an excessive amount of trash and debris being left behind, Lodi’s skate park was closed Monday until further notice.
“There was an immense amount of trash and debris that was left in the park, and it’s just not fair to the public for us to use that much staff time picking up trash when we could be using it to benefit other uses of our park system,” Lodi Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services Director Jeff Hood said. “With the excessive heat, our staff just doesn’t have the time to be picking up after them and we need to focus our resources in other areas, so we’ll just have to keep it shut for a while.”
Hood is unsure when the skate park, located at Kofu Park on Ham Lane, will reopen. He said that during a recent visit to the skate park that several food wrappers, empty drink cups, plastic debris, alcohol bottles and other trash items were found scattered around the park. Closing the park seemed to be the best way to handle the issue and get people’s attention and urge them to be more mindful with their trash when using the park, Hood said.
“We have to get their attention and it’s unfortunate that the responsible users are unable to use the skate park for this period,” he said.
Hood said operating the skate park on a membershiponly basis would not be a viable solution because people don’t want to pay. He said initially the skate park was membership only and instead of paying to use the park, people skated in unauthorized areas.
According to Hood, the city spends $12,000 a year to maintain the park and a vast majority of the staffing goes toward clean-up efforts. Other park costs include ramp upgrades and repairs as well as vandalism repairs.
“Overall, it’s not as bad as it used to be, but this weekend it was trashed pretty well,” Hood said. He did not say whether there is surveillance at the park but said the city will be expanding its video surveillance in parks in the coming year.
“No other park in the city has trash to this extent,” Hood said. “We don’t have a problem like this at any other park.”
When asked why Kofu Park has more trash than other parks, Hood said it’s the skaters.
“It’s the people who use the skate park to skate. They bring refreshments with them and they just decide that they don’t want to put it in the trash can. I’m not sure why they just decide they don’t want to. We have plenty of trash cans there.”
Hood said that he doesn’t intend to bring in any extra patrols to monitor the trash once the park reopens.
“We have trash cans there,” Hood said. “I don’t want to have our cops baby-sit our skate park to make sure people are dropping their drink cup in the garbage can. That’s just something responsible users should do without having to have someone to tell them to do it. It just goes along with having a cooperative society.”