Remember the name Cory Kirsling. Cory has bird dogged the mulch issue for a year and with an adroitness and tenacity that makes slow-but-steady bureaucracy eat his dust. When the Lowell PTA hopped on board with mulch replacement Cory helped its parents put a natural, non-rubber crumb, mulch, play space next to the soot staining main playground. Our district administration did not stand in the way and no one worried about insuring the volunteers. I blogged about this project last year.
In reply to a text message from me, Cory outlined what he has lined up to replace our tire mulch. His text, sans the name of people and businesses who have agreed to help remove our mulch, ends this post. These folks may be able to do this for less than our consultant will be paid by 709 to come up with a $1.2 million proposal following the fussy requirements demanded by the bid we sent out.
Now I’m not suggesting that Cory’s plans to help parent volunteers will give us better playgrounds than the $1.2 million plan we will be considering over the next two weeks. I’m not even suggesting that the controversial tire mulch is a threat beyond than the annoying stains it causes. But in the face of the unknown dangers lurking in the chemistry of the mulch I know this. Cory Kirsling has developed most of a plan that would get rid of all the tire mulch over the summer while the $1.2 million plan will keep children in contact with the dubious rubber mulch for up to three years. As a frustrated parent told me this morning, the government seems to be telling us that the people who remove the rubber mulch will have to wear hazmat suits to do the job. That’s OK I told her. We will simply order 6,000 child sized hazmat suits for our children to wear at recess for the next three years.
Here is what Cory just texted me based on the calls he made today looking for help to remove what might turn out to be a toxic substance poisoning our children:
I have contacted multiple people today.
1. ****** ********** of ***** construction. He has a vac truck.
He can remove all the tire mulch and do any drainage work that needs to be done with out moving a single piece of playground equipment.
He said he could do this at a fraction of the cost that has been proposed.
2. *** ***** Recycling will take all the tire mulch.
3. **** ********s will truck the tire mulch too Tri State. Again at a fraction of the cost.
4. ******s landscaping can provide all the EWF it will be yellow pine.
Resistant to mold.
5. We will use a seed spreader to spread the EWF .
The county uses these to spread hay on the side of roads.
We use all volunteers to spread it.
6. D****** believes we could do all the work this summer. It would take a couple of weeks.
He actually laughed at the consultants price.
I will have all the information by next week. But not in time for the meeting on Monday. We need to buy time.
Then we need to show the mismanagement and how little research this consultants did.
(They didn’t even go a look at each site, how can you give a accurate bid without doing that?)
Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE smartphone
