City cleans up pyramid stack of 45 picnic tables | Crime

Vandalism kept some city crews busy Tuesday morning as they cleaned up a pyramid of picnic tables in Riverfront Park. The table structure reached 32 feet in height and required a bucket truck from Urban Forestry and a forklift to unstack about 45 picnic tables one by one.

Lead foreman David Randolph with Spokane Parks discovered the structure when he showed up to work around 4 a.m. Randolph says they had to dismantle a similar structure on Saturday morning at the same location.

“I’m glad nobody was killed while they put it up and hopefully none of my crew will get killed while they take it down,” Randolph said.

The weekend shenanigans cost the city about $500 for the resources to take the structure down. Park crews had to repeat the same costs on Tuesday to go through the process again.

“We have to take down the top ten tables with a bucket truck which is very expensive and labor intensive and we will take the rest of them down with a fork lift,” Randolph explained.

Taking care of vandalism is the last thing Randolph wants to do in a day’s work. He’d rather be beautifying the park instead of cleaning up spray paint, broken windows and ruined flower beds. Randolph explains it as a “complete disregard for property the citizens of Spokane should be enjoying.”

“I could be doing so many other things to make this park better, but instead I’m taking care of vandalism. Probably 20-30% of my job is vandalism,” Randolph said.

As for the crews from Urban Forestry, Randolph is just glad they were there to help.

“They were gracious enough to come down and help, but they could have been doing more things productive to benefit the taxpayers,” Randolph added.