Members of the Seymour Parks and Recreation Department board gathered for their monthly meeting Monday, Oct. 21, at city hall.

This month, the board discussed updates on some of their publicly available assets along with an incident report that brought a lot of topics to the table.

Kessler Park’s locked bathrooms were recently broken into and vandalized by someone who clogged toilets, threw paper and trash on the floor and wrote profanity that was especially graphic, parks Director Chad Keithley said. Currently, the bathroom doors are screwed shut to prevent more damage, which is a precaution the board had to take last year for vandalism.

“Lots of profanity and pictures that I did not want to share on a Google drive,” Keithley said.

He said many things in the bathroom fell victim to vandalizing, including door handles, toilets, stall doors, toilet paper holders and more.

Board member Bethany Rust brought up the security camera topic, to see if monitoring those coming in and out of the bathrooms would help determine when vandalism occurs. Some parks such as Westside already have cameras that are stationed to monitor the outside of the bathrooms, but some of the board expressed concern if cameras will prevent any damage from occurring and if the culprit is caught, what should be done.

In a situation such as the recent one at Kessler, because the bathrooms were already locked, finding the culprit would’ve been simpler. For times when vandalism occurs during hours when the restrooms are open to the public, board member Kendra Zumhingst said there’s not a way to identify the right person if you can’t see what they’re doing.

A debate followed on whether identifying the culprits and exposing them publicly would be a good idea.

Rust said vandals should face some kind of consequences, not just to fix the problem they’ve created, but in the form of being called out. Zumhingst countered, saying if the culprits are minors, they can’t be publicly called out.

Board President Monica Riley said exposing culprits could reflect poorly on the city and the department if they were to “publicly shame” those responsible, explaining it would come off as “irresponsible and rude.”

“It’s rude that we constantly have to spend money to fix things that should not be broken,” Rust said. “That’s rude.”

While there wasn’t a consensus made on how to handle vandals and their actions, dealing with the concerned community was. The board said they deal with many angry and upset comments on the Facebook page, directed toward the Parks and Rec board, which Rust believes continues to the degree it does due to a lack of responses from the department.

Rust said they should be responding to at least a few concerned comments to answer questions and make the community feel heard. Even if they don’t have answers or solutions, she and others on the board came to the agreement there should be more effort made to inform the community.

“Knowledge is power,” Rust said.

Two of the pickleball courts at Gaiser Park recently were completed with paint and lights, bringing the total number of them at the park to four.

Keithley said that the fencing for the courts should be done by the end of the month.

“(There are a) lot of community members happy and can’t wait for the fence to go up because our pickleball courts are busy,” he said. “They are nonstop.”

The members of the board recognized the popularity of the sport not only in Seymour, but in other locations such as Cincinnati, where Zumhingst said they have two rows of 10 courts at a park and at 8 p.m. on a Saturday, there were only two of the courts unoccupied.

When asked about adding more courts in the future, Keithley said installing two of the Gaiser Park courts cost roughly $50,000, which was funded by a Regional Development Corporation grant. He said the paint coding and netting alone were around $20,000 along with fencing at $8,000.

The Westside Park splash pad was winterized by contractors Oct. 7 and is scheduled to reopen at the beginning of April 2025.

Keithley said the new style of activation switch to turn on the splash pad, which was discussed due to constant damage the button on the ground was receiving, is almost complete and is expected to be installed when the splash pad reopens.

Since the second Monday of November is Veterans Day on Nov. 11, the board decided to move their next scheduled meeting to Nov. 18.