It’s tough! Keeping the city’s parks in presentable condition seven days a week, 365 days a year. This critically thinking News-dog thinks that our Parks Department does a pretty admirable job, considering some of the battles they’ve gotta fight to get it done – constantly grappling with finite resources to fix seemingly infinite problems that pop up on almost a daily basis in any given city park in the system.

Couple the above with the general population, or shall we say the small percentage of the general population, that seem to cause 90% of the negative issues wherever they may go. Errant drivers that jump curbs, unwillingly or otherwise, and wreak all kinds of havoc from knocking down stone walls to “farming” greenway areas off area boulevards.

This civic-minded Newsdog gets it, and can empathize with the Parks Department and their ongoing and often Herculean efforts to make and keep our city beautiful. What the dog doesn’t get, however, is when local construction companies get in on the destruction by deliberately destroying city infrastructure in the daily carrying out of their alleged infrastructure upgrade operations. Yes folks, you guessed it, we’re talking about our ol’ buddies over at Infra Source, who seem to be pretty much everywhere these days, wantonly destroying city infrastructure and disrupting traffic while contracting for the folks at Spire Energy (that’s the gas company to you and me, and you can rest assured this little bit of Infra Source “improvement” will appear on your monthly gas bill, thank you very much).

We’ve written before about the boys at Infra Source on a couple of occasions, and their often careless delivery of “improvements” some refer to as “manna from heaven.” Last Friday’s little excursion in infrastructure destruction by Infra Source came in the form of heavy equipment that was parked in the triangle-shaped greenway area at Lexington & LaBelle Terrace, just inside the Scarritt neighborhood boundaries.

If the equipment storage on the soft ground and grass wasn’t enough, Infra Source trucks followed that up by dumping a pile of asphalt right on the grass. That was followed by another truck dumping a large pile of sand next to the asphalt, you guessed it, right on the grass. Keep in mind that in order to do this, they rolled that 30,000-pound loaded truck over a pedestrian ADA sidewalk ramp with a weight limit of maybe 5,000 pounds. More infrastructure destruction in the form of cracked and broken concrete on top of the already rutted dirt and grass and dumped asphalt and sand that will leave large circles of dead grass when it’s all said and done. As the afternoon progressed, more equipment appeared on the grassy knoll causing even more damage to the already plowed, scraped and now deeply-rutted surface.

Infra Source has done the same thing at Gladstone Boulevard and Van Brunt, where they’ve parked heavy equipment on the parkway, killing large sections of vegetation and leaving a dead, rutted greenway behind for the citizens to enjoy – and the city to clean up and repair at taxpayer expense. Don’t mind that huge metal culvert reinforcement in the woods either. Nothing to see here.

The dog had had enough and snapped these proof-telling pictures of the offending vehicles, crawlers, scrapers, piping-coils and piles, then forwarded them to the Parks department for follow up, asking if the practice of green-space destruction was okey-dokey with them. According to the overworked folks at the Parks Department, the practice was indeed frowned upon greatly, unacceptable and would be dealt with accordingly.

Additionally, our old buddies at Infra Source will also be responsible for any type of damages caused to said grassy area, as well as any other miscellaneous and sundry damage caused by their carelessness. This dog is pleased to hear that news and would kindly hope the city follows through on that promise. For the record, we’re more than happy to act as a witness to said destruction, as well. Like the dog said, it’s tough keeping parks looking like parks these days, and with “friends” like Infra Source in the mix, who needs errant drivers and wall destroyers?