Sometime at last week’s end, unknown person(s) vandalized the park, leading into the holiday weekend. Visitors who brought their children to the park over the weekend found park adjacent facilities disfigured with vulgar and bigoted messages and images.
As parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, and friends pulled in to visit the park with young children over the holiday weekend, one of the first sights their eyes beheld were the freshly painted offensive images on the bathroom building. Little imagination was required to recognize the images. Concerned citizens reached out to Mayor Rick Pinson, who quickly contacted the City of Bristow Public Works Director to plan a cleaning and repainting of the facilities’ exterior early Tuesday morning.
The mayor suggested his desire for the building to be repainted in a cheerful way, bringing additional hope and joy for park visitors. Additionally, the city ultimately plans to renovate and reopen the bathroom facilities in the future. As of Tuesday morning, city employees Jeramie Caldwell and Joey Gasperini busily worked to repaint and clean up the building’s exterior. The city’s goal is to convey a sense of pride, community, and dependability within the community they serve. At a time when so much negativity resides and thrives in our midst, experiencing positive change proves vital. Mayor Pinson and City of Bristow employees endeavor to attain that positivity.
Mayor Pinson expressed his disappointment with how the graffiti affects the entire community by saying, “It’s not just an attack on a building but on our decency and our commitment to building a better, cleaner, healthier community for us all. It’s personal.” In an effort to address the current vandalism and work toward preventing additional destructive acts in the future, Mayor Pinson confirmed that a reward of $500 about this particular act of vandalism will be paid to anyone offering information that leads to an arrest and conviction of the person(s) responsible. Anyone with any information about the vandalism or those responsible may call the Bristow Police Department at 918-367-2251 or the City of Bristow at 918-367-2237 to make a report.