Uxbridge cracks down on stunt driving at local park

The Town of Uxbridge is cracking down on vandalism and stunt driving at a local park.

Over the course of several months, new barriers and cameras have been installed to stop the issues, with community safety top of mind.

Joanne Richter walks her dog Echo at Herrema Fields almost every day but she says it’s not always peaceful at the Uxbridge park.

“This park is used for all kinds of doughnuts and stunt driving, like, the sound really travels, especially at night. I feel like you could probably hear that anywhere in town. It was really, really loud,” said Richter, who only lives a few blocks from the park.

The noise has recently stopped, and it could be due to new wooden posts put up by the town.

“It’s such a simple, elegant solution. It doesn’t require additional enforcement,” said Richter.

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Bruce Garrod, Uxbridge Ward 3 councillor and finance chair, says the town put up the 45 posts in the middle of July.

Garrod says the town thought about a number of solutions and the wooden posts in the middle of the parking lot made the most sense without taking parking away.

“That’s the biggest issue — the disruption to the neighbours. There’s people that live right adjacent to the park and right across the road from it,” said Garrod.

The wooden posts are just the latest in a number of measures taken in recent months.

“For $3,000 we now eliminate the need for repairs to the parking lot that inevitably be done once or twice a year and then the rocks that we installed along the edge of Herrema we put in last year so that people don’t come in in the winter. They were heading over and ruining our soccer fields,” said Garrod.

Security cameras were also installed last year to prevent graffiti.

“Since we put that in there hasn’t been anymore tagging on our walls,” said Garrod.

John Cavers, who has lived in the area for the past 15 years, welcomes the changes.

“I guess they want a lot of space to rip and roar and they don’t have that now,” Cavers said.

“For what I’ve seen, it’s really calmed the park down, especially at night.”

As for Richter, she says it can be a busy park with lots of kids running around and she doesn’t want to see anyone getting hurt.