KHOU-11 reports on the concerns of some Acres Homes residents about the city’s plans to build another park in their community:
“Nothing but drug dealers hang out, selling drugs. Nothing good,” said resident Mary Taylor, “Wouldn’t nobody come here but some of the bad people.”
Taylor is talking about Acres Homes city parks, places she said welcome problems, not families.
When Taylor learned that the city is planning on building another park in her community, she rallied her neighbors.
“We want something better than a park,” Taylor said.
They want a YMCA.
“We fighting crime as it is without a park and if you put up a park out here with no kind of facilities or supervision or what have you, we just got more crime,” she said.
[snip]
The proposed park sits on 27-acres, enough, Taylor said, to build a YMCA where families can go and not be afraid.
Steubner-Ariline park, in Acres Homes is the same area where there have been problems including several women being murdered, a search for a serial killer.
When 11 News spoke with the City Parks department, they said this was the first they had heard of this proposition. They said they would listen to Taylor’s and the concerns of other residents.
Who can blame Ms. Taylor, really? Crime is on the rise and an unsupervised park can be a magnet for unsavory sorts of people. Are there adequate police patrols in the Acres Homes community? Did the city talk to Acres Homes residents when it was drawing up its plans for the new park? Will the new downtown park face the same problems?
