Superintendent estimates $2K to $3K in damage

“Why?”

That was the simple question Jeff Kinasz, park superintendent for the Oxford Township Parks and Recreation Department, was asking on the morning of Aug. 14 after yet another significant act of vandalism was discovered in the 300-acre Oakwood Lake Park.

“You’ve got a nice park here,” he said. “I know kids do dumb stuff sometimes, but this was major damage.”

It appears sometime between Aug. 13 and 14 some person or persons used a vehicle to repeatedly drive over three different grass areas, two of which are near the entrance and visible from Oakwood Rd. The vehicle tore up the grass, left behind ruts and tracks, and damaged a tree.

Some pieces of broken plastic, which could possibly be from the responsible vehicle, were found around the damaged tree.

“They were out here for a while,” Kinasz speculated. “I’d say they had to be out here (for) a half-hour.”

Repairing the damage will go well beyond a little raking here and there. According to Kinasz, they will have to haul in dirt, level the ground and plant grass seed.

“This isn’t a simple fix,” he said.

Kinasz estimated it will cost about $2,000 to $3,000 to repair the damage.

“And that’s with us doing a lot of the work,” he said. “It’s not technically free for us to do it, either. I have to pay guys to come out and we have to bring equipment out.”

Making the repairs will “tie (the department’s maintenance crew) up for probably a couple days,” Kinasz noted, which means less time to work at the other three township parks.

“It takes away from everything else we’re trying to get done,” he said.

Vandalism at Oakwood Lake Park is nothing new. There have been numerous acts over the years.

“It’s been thing after thing after thing out here,” Kinasz said.

In August 2011, someone used what appeared to be a truck to knock over and destroy a trail marker, do doughnuts in the grass and ram the park’s inner chain-link gates. It also appeared that someone had fired a shotgun at the park’s main sign. It was riddled with holes from birdshot.

In September 2013, someone went through the park and destroyed all 16 signs marking its nature trail system. These were not little signs, either. Each 6-foot-tall cedar sign was mounted in the ground with two 4×4 pieces of wood.

There have been other acts as well.

“We had picnic tables out here. They crushed those. Drove trucks on top of them,” Kinasz said.

Vandals have stolen garbage cans, destroyed or damaged the park’s main sign three times and repeatedly rammed the gates meant to prevent motorized vehicles from driving on the park’s hiking trails. Kinasz is preparing to replace those gates for the third time as the most recent ramming occurred about two months ago.

Over the years, Kinasz estimated vandals have caused “probably $25,000 to $30,000 worth of damage” at Oakwood Lake Park.

“And that doesn’t include the stuff that we just come out and fix,” he noted.

All this vandalism deters the department from adding new amenities to the park.

“We can’t do a lot of stuff that we want to do out here because of this,” Kinasz said. “We wanted to put a pavilion out here. Can’t do it because they’ll tear it down.”

The same goes for adding simple items like picnic tables and grills.

“We can’t have any of that,” Kinasz said.

Efforts to catch the perpetrators have thus far been unsuccessful.

“We’ve tried cameras, but you can’t get a positive ID on people with trail cams,” Kinasz explained.

The parks and rec. department has also taken steps to try to prevent vandalism by increasing the park’s visibility.

In 2016, an 18-hole disc golf course was installed at the park in an effort to attract more visitors and get “more eyes” on it.

“The more eyes you have, the better off you are. People can report stuff when they see it,” Kinasz said.

Kinasz noted the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office routinely patrols the park.

“The police are out here all the time, driving through,” he said. “They’re doing the best they can do. It’s not that people aren’t trying or watching.”

If anybody has information about this latest incident or saw something, Kinasz would “greatly appreciate” it if they would call either the parks and rec. office at (248) 628-1720 or call the sheriff’s Oxford substation at (248) 969-3077.

Unless the vandalism took place in the wee hours, Kinasz believes “somebody had to drive by and see them out here.”

“There’s a lot of traffic on this road,” he said.

Also, if anyone witnesses an act of vandalism, Kinasz urges them to call either the sheriff’s office or the parks and rec. department right away.

“They’ll be out here within five minutes or less,” he said.