Lake Havasu parents press city for inclusive playgrounds, staff ask for prioritized wish list

Lake Havasu City Parks & Recreation officials heard an extended presentation from parents and local advocates at their October meeting calling for a phased program to make city playgrounds inclusive for people of all abilities.

"Our parks are beautiful, and we are grateful to the parks department for keeping them that way. But families like ours would like to enjoy them more," said Jillian Danielson, who introduced herself as a parent and longtime River Scene Magazine contributor. She described repeated difficulties her daughter faced on playground equipment and said rubber surfacing, wider and sensory slides, ramps and wheelchair-compatible swings are needed so children and adults with disabilities can use the parks independently. "Are all abilities kids and adults need ramps to slides? They need sensory slides, and they need large swings and wheelchair swings," Danielson said.

Advocates showed multiple short videos that documented the difficulty of pushing wheelchairs and strollers across wood chips and navigating curb lips. In one clip played for the board, a parent pushed a 40-pound child and a stroller through playground wood chips and described having to leave the child briefly unattended to reposition the chair, calling the situation "dangerous."

Speakers asked the board to start with attainable fixes such as installing rubberized surfacing in high-use areas, adding a short fence between Rotary Park's playground and the adjacent roadway, providing adult-size changing tables in park restrooms, and installing at least one wheelchair-accessible swing and a lower, more stable slide mount for children with balance or motor-control issues. Multiple speakers noted the existence of grant programs and nonprofit partnerships used by other communities to fund inclusive play equipment.

Director Gabby Rivera told the board that parks staff and Park Superintendent Guy Reynolds had already been working on some accessibility items. Rivera said the department has ordered a low-ground pool play apparatus that will be installed during the annual pool closure and that staff are in conversations with a manufacturer about an accessible circulating apparatus that allows a wheelchair user to roll on and be secured. "We've already been taking the necessary steps," Rivera said, and she asked the presenting group to provide a prioritized list of "must-haves" so staff can pursue grants and include projects in the department's phased playground plan.

Community-service providers and caregivers backed the request. Tommy Castro, who works as a mentor and coach, described the outsize benefit of modest changes: "Something as small as a solid padded floor could change everything for them.—They are our community, they are us," he said. Representatives from New Horizons and family members recounted falls, mobility-device entanglements in shredded-tire surfacing, and the lack of adult changing stations as recurring barriers.

Board members and the council liaison praised the presentation, thanked speakers for the materials and videos, and urged a partnership model: advocates would help raise funds and identify grant sources while parks staff would provide scope, procurement and installation timelines. Rivera said the city will treat accessibility upgrades as a phased effort tied to the playground master-plan and to replacement cycles for existing play equipment.

What happened next: The board did not take a formal vote on funding. Instead members directed staff to accept the advocates' prioritized list and to work with them on grant-seeking and a phased implementation plan to be considered during the next budget cycle and the department's playground master plan.

Why it matters: Inclusive playgrounds remove daily barriers to recreation for children and adults with disabilities and can create safer, more usable public spaces for caregivers and families. Local advocates described both safety hazards and missed opportunities for social inclusion that small surface and hardware changes could address.

Provenance: The presentation and videos were shown during Item 7.1 ("playground initiatives by ADA moms") beginning at the board agenda timecode 00:19:43 and concluded with staff's response roughly at 01:08:19. Topic evidence includes the initial presentation by Jillian Danielson (00:20:49 transcript block) and the staff response by Director Rivera (01:08:19 transcript block).