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Last summer, a five-year-old boy picked up a used needle while playing at a park in Cobourg, Ontario. His mom says they’re not going back unless something changes, but Cobourg has launched a new 10-year Parks and Recreation Master Plan project that doesn’t include a plan of how to fix the squalor, but instead chooses to cede public spaces to it.

Cobourg was coined Ontario’s feel good town for it’s pristine beach, safe streets, and irresistible charm. Now, woke bureaucrats and ideologue politicians seem determined to manage its decline instead of protecting its legacy.

Case in point: families now scour every crevice of every park before letting their kids play, if they dare go at all. They must sweep public bathrooms for needles and paraphernalia before entering, while port-a-potties at local parks risk fentanyl-laced exposure.

What makes this proposed plan even more concerning is that it will be at the centre of every Cobourg kids’ childhood for the next decade.

With families avoiding parks because of encampments, discarded needles, open drug use, crime, disorder and disarray; drug fuelled criminality has turned quiet streets into hubs of chaos and it’s pulling kids away from public spaces.

It’s the reality I’ve been reporting on for years.

One concerned resident already shared this exact experience as part of Explore Cobourg’s online feedback mechanism, writing that their five-year-old son picked up a needle while playing in a park last summer and that they won’t be back until something is done.

Yet this Master Plan feels more like surrendering and acquiescing our public spaces rather than changing the trajectory and putting our truly most vulnerable – children and the elderly – ahead of criminality.

“Effective non-stigmatizing signage treats all park users with dignity and provides clear instructions and resources,” the report reads, calling for language and tone policing around words like “drug users, addicts, illegal” to be replaced with “park users, community members, sharps.”

This plan admits the problems – encampments, drugs, families steering clear – then recommends more meetings between staff, police, Public Health, and ‘unhoused advocates.’

So, where are the parents? The grandparents? The families who actually use these parks for their intended purposes and pay the taxes for them? Those also pay for the fallout of all of this disorder?

Cobourg Mayor Lucas Cleveland wrote an extensive press release, citing how the report is “laughable if it were not so disturbing” because “drug use in any Park in Ontario is Illegal!”

"This is social services advocacy language, not parks planning language… Cobourg is not a laboratory. Our parks are not campgrounds. Our tax dollars are not a subsidy for your ideology."

It’s worth noting that it’s not all bad. There’s a proposed new splash pad because the existing one is so popular, yet even though the outdoor rink is also highly used, no additional rinks are planned.

Overall, the report is a lot of inaction… after inaction. ‘Investigate… explore… consider… continue to pursue.’

It’s not a bold 10-year vision, or a reinvigoration of beautiful parks and playgrounds. It’s managed decline while letting the problems fester.

A town that plans for problems gets more problems. A town that plans ambitiously for families, gets more families.

Taxpayers aren’t here to fund endless ‘further study’ and advocacy group pet projects. They deserve real priorities: safe, vibrant parks, more family amenities, actual solutions to clear out the needles and encampments.

Children get one childhood.

It should be filled with riding bikes, playing in splash pads, making memories, digging in the sand, using the bathrooms, and learning to skateboard without having to navigate around discarded needles and social experiments.

This draft normalizes failure when it should inspire greatness.

And for now, it’s apparently still a draft, but the engagement window is closing soon, so read it for yourself and email Cobourg council before Monday, June 8, if you want your voice to be represented in the feedback.

Safe communities and the innocent, carefree childhoods our kids deserve are worth fighting for.