Every day of the year, City of Cornwall staff members endeavour to make our City beautiful. Whether it’s through planting a wide variety of flowers on boulevards and parks, stringing up lights around Christmas time or even just cleaning facilities, these are all little things that make up our beautification strategy.
In my role as Communications Officer, I’m kept up to date on several different matters in our City. Despite most of it being positive, some news unfortunately happens to be about vandalism. What irks me the most is that the individuals that commit this same vandalism probably don’t realize that it not only affects our City from a financial standpoint — taxpayers end up having to pay to replace the damage after all — it also has quite a negative impact on staff members.
Imagine for a minute that you spent your whole day in the sweltering sun, planting flowers at the Rotary Eco Garden. How would you feel if you were to learn that these same flowers were stolen — yes, I mean stolen — just a few days later. I’m sure you’d feel quite defeated.
Well unfortunately, this exact scenario happened not too long ago. Not only that, but hundreds of tulips were destroyed or stolen at the City’s Cenotaph earlier this spring.
It also doesn’t just stop at flowers. In late July, I was also made aware that the bathrooms at a handful of outdoor parks were also vandalized. An individual(s) with too much time on their hands took it upon themselves to spray paint a slew of hateful words on the exterior of a bathroom.
City crews were quick to clean off the hateful vandalism.
Unfortunately, it appears that vandals are a very dedicated group. Earlier this winter, the beautiful display of lights that was set up at the traffic circle on Brookdale Avenue was damaged not once, but twice.
Each time, it appears that the individual responsible tried to damage the display as much as he or she could. We’re talking about cutting power cords and ripping out lights from trees.
Again, I witnessed City staff put up those lights in -20 C weather, for several hours. I can just imagine how they felt learning of the damage.
Case and point — vandalism to City property doesn’t just impact taxpayers. It’s also a hard thing to witness for staff. Let’s work together to keep our City beautiful.
If you happen to see individuals damaging City property, please call the Cornwall Police Service.
