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See story on Funding for playground

    A big "thank you" to the "Angel" who provided a wonderful new playground for the children at the corner of Middlesex and Burlington, Gloucester City.

    It is a vast improvement over the sad excuse for a playground that was there before. The kids love and so do the parents.

    The problem with the new playground is the other kids who use it. I am talking about the teenagers that come after the sun goes down and are there until all hours of the night.

    I could live with the noise, but the language used and the mess they leave behind are a disgrace. I have heard the parents of some of the toddlers scold some of the teenage kids for the language used in front of the little ones. The response the adults get is not very respectful. The other night I witnessed a teenage boy (only one in a group of five or six) urinate all over the same wood shavings that a toddler would be playing in perhaps 10 hours later. The way the structure is laid out provides a perfect hiding spot for the kids to sit underneath and smoke cigarettes or what have you. We were all teenagers once so I don't need to spell it out.

    I know that there aren't a lot of options for the teens when it comes to finding something for entertainment, but I do think that if you are taller than four feet and over 6th grade, you really should not be taking advantage of a place that was built for children.

    I don't know if there needs to be more police presence after the children leave or if parents "Watch" group would be effective, but something needs to be done to save this playground from becoming the broken down, rusty, dirty place that was the former playground.

Brad Jeffries, Gloucester City