The playground at Lucille Ball Memorial Park has seen frequent visitors the last several days in the wake of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s June 11 announcement that local municipalities could choose to open public playgrounds and pools if they so choose. P-J photo by Cameron Hurst

As New York state gradually makes its way toward a full reopening, comments made during a recent press conference by Gov. Andrew Cuomo have kickstarted efforts for local municipalities to begin reopening areas of interest to younger residents and families — playgrounds.

In that June 11 daily briefing, Cuomo announced that “Public pools and playgrounds, we’re going to leave to local governments … But they have to use their judgment here.”

“I’m excited that we’re looking into open them back up,” Jamestown Mayor Eddie Sundquist told The Post-Journal. “We’ve received a lot of requests to open them back up.”

The task of doing so, however, has been easier said than done, he said. As of Thursday, playgrounds were still technically closed.

“We want to make sure it is as safe as possible,” he said. “We don’t want to rush into it and then have a sudden rash of the virus pop back up.”

Though playgrounds like the one pictured above at Fletcher Elementary School are not officially open yet, visitors have removed caution tape and have proceeded to use the play equipment. P-J photo by Cameron Hurst

He added, “I think the first thing to note is that the safety of our children is the No. 1 priority for us. To find the proper mechanism to disinfect while we open up is very important to us as a city. We want to figure out a plan for that to make sure that it’s sanitized daily and safe for children to play on and once we take care of that, we’ll open it back up.”

Julia Ciesla-Hanley, the city’s recreation coordinator, said the news that playgrounds could reopen came as a surprise to the department.

“We were originally thinking that it will be Phase Four before they let us open the playgrounds,” she said. “It makes me laugh because this has been the strange situation the last several months: the week before he came out with the directive saying, ‘No, they’re still closed.’ Then he changed his mind and said, ‘Nope,’ go ahead. Now we know that we can have groups of 25 or under.”

Ciesla-Hanley said that the Department of Parks, Recreation and Conservation has spent the last few days evaluating how to properly sanitize the play equipment and does expect the equipment to be open for use as ealy as the end of next week.

“We’re looking at what is a good way to disinfect that makes sense and efficient,” she said. “We’re looking at what they’re doing in New York City with the subway systems and in spraying with a wand to disinfect and we thought that would translate well to play equipment.”

She added, “You think about all the places you could put a hand or foot on a piece of play equipment and then you think of how long it would take to wipe down each individual part of it. So, we wondered what will be a more efficient way to address the issue at hand. So, it looks like we’re going to be spray disinfecting.”

While the city has caretakers that make sure the playgrounds are kept tidy and has cleaned equipment whenever needed, the spread of COVID-19, however, has begged a previously unaddressed question.

“Honestly, we didn’t have a disinfecting routine before,” Ciesla-Hanley said. “It wasn’t something we considered that we should be doing. I’d be surprised if that was similar in other communities. We obviously had ways of cleaning if we needed and there were times we had to for various reasons.”

Cleaning up the tree debris that came as a result of a June 10 storm with a limited staff to do so has also delayed the playgrounds’ reopening, Sundquist said.

“We’re trying to take care of fallen trees, working on ways to clean up those trees, taking down the stumps, working diligently to get that done,” he said. “Once we get that done, we’ll be moving on to making sure playgrounds are safe to reopen.”

Smaller villages, however, have struggled with enforcing the mandate about play areas.

“To close down all the facilities, you have to take board action and they restricted the board meetings, so we had a hard time being able to conduct business,” Celoron Mayor Scott Schrecengost said. “That’s why a lot of our stuff never was closed. Some other towns had some success, but they had their meetings before the governor made the mandate to close.”

As a result, the playground and basketball court at Lucille Ball Memorial Park never really closed.

“We didn’t have any real way to keep it closed down and it was hard to police everything that goes on in the park,” he said. “There were always kids that were playing anyhow. If we saw them out there, though, we had to go over and tell them to leave … But, I don’t know how they expect towns and villages to police it.”

Falconer Mayor James Jaroszynski agreed.

“We don’t have the manpower and the infrastructure to monitor the playgrounds and basketball courts to maintain proper social distancing, with masks and disinfecting the way that the governor wishes,” he said, noting that any caution tape placed on the equipment has been removed.

“A lot of municipalities have cameras in their parks,” he said, “And there are parents are going down and taking down the tape.”

As of now, Jaroszynski said, village officials, are unsure when the play equipment can safely open, but will continue to monitor the possibility.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever get to the point where we formally open them because of the federal CDC guidelines,” he said. “We’ll just thave to wait and see what happens.”