As a frequent visitor at Heritage Park in East Brainerd, I must say that the situation is becoming slightly out of control. To start, parking is atrocious. The unpaved lot contains nothing but loose gravel which has naturally given way to divots in the ground assuring you a few bumps. Why isn't this area smoothed out? It's not worth parking there anyways because younger people now congregate over there and blast their music.
The other paved parking area is maddening as well. People parking up over two, sometimes three full parking spaces when the park is crowded. Why? Recent flooding has yielded the walking path closed, but for some strange reason, younger couples are tying up hammocks in the closed off areas and causing noise. If the path is closed, why is no one seeing that they are informed that such is closed and asked to retreat into the open areas of the park?
Today was the last straw for me as a group of teenagers were throwing footballs on the walking paths instead of the vacant open grass areas. They were trying to hit a squirrel with the football when I told them that they can't try to kill a squirrel in a park like that. The only reply I got from them were expletives.
Twenty-five dollars to get a pass to let your dog use the fenced dog park? Why do that when I see a healthy number of people just toss their pooch over and then jump the fence themselves.
The real issue is why isn't there any park patrol checking to see that things such as the aforementioned aren't happening on almost a daily basis?
Billy C. Thomas