GREEN BAY – During its April 15 meeting, the Green Bay City Council unanimously approved the removal of the St. John’s Park playground and directed staff to create a future master plan for the park.
After receiving much feedback from the public, the council heard input from Green Bay Police Chief Chris Davis and Director of Parks, Recreation, and Forestry Dan Ditscheit.
“Recognizing that this was the oldest playground, it was scheduled in a rotation for replacement. I’ve seen a lot of online chatter, right? And so I just, I want to be clear that we’re not removing this in lieu of addressing the challenges we have with the unhoused… we’ve had a task force that Chief Davis had convened, and a lot of people were part of that. So, I want to be fair that there actually has been a lot of work and effort to try to address it. Unfortunately, it’s not an easy problem, and the problem does persist and there are probably some things that we really do need to address outside of this meeting —around, maybe more aggressively deal with some of those other issues, whether it be trash or other issues going on there. I think we all know the things, we don’t have to necessarily list them all out, but there is an underlying issue that should be addressed,” City Council President Brain Johnson said during discussion.
Johnson added that the city shouldn’t just take the simplest route in dealing with issues affecting the playground.
“I feel like we are removing it because it’s just easier to maybe do that then there’s no immediate need to have to remove it, other than wood chips,” he added.
“There are, obviously, multiple reasons that we’re proposing to move to remove it,” Ditscheit said in clarifying the need. “The immediate issue right now is, if we want to keep it as a playground, we have to invest $2-3,000 to place wood chips there to make it a safe playground. But there are issues above and beyond that. We have issues with some vandalism on it. Somebody mentioned at the last meeting that there’s, you know, graffiti all over the slides. I haven’t been out there recently to look at that myself, but that wouldn’t surprise me, because we do clean up a lot of graffiti on there.
“So there’s also a maintenance issue where we have to go there and inspect it on a regular basis and take care of things like that break down. So, it’s more than just wood chips long term. If we want to keep it there for another year or two, we have regular inspections and other things we need to do.
“One thing to point out is that if you check out the motion that was actually made at the committee. It’s actually to refer to staff to create a master plan for the park itself. And so, you know, our desire is to create that master plan maybe in the next six months or so, and have that approved by the park committee and city council. And that will dictate the long-term need or desire of wanting a playground there long term.
“We know that that is one of our oldest playgrounds, or the oldest playground tied with a couple of other playgrounds in the city. It is due for replacement. But we also know that the issues in the park are not going to be quick fixes, and it’s not going to be something we’re going to resolve in a year.”
During its April 15 meeting, the Green Bay City Council also approved a request from the Department of Public Works to adopt a resolution to increase parking rates in public parking ramps during the 2025 NFL Draft.
The motion passed 10-2, with Brian Johnson and Bill Morgan voting “no.”
The rates will increase from $1/hour and a $12/day maximum to $2/hour and a $24/day maximum.
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