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<\/p>\nNewswatch 16’s Valeria Qui\u00f1ones spoke with the president of the community’s neighborhood association about what they’re doing to combat this.<\/p>\n
SCRANTON, Pa. \u2014 What should be a peaceful neighborhood gathering spot in the Green Ridge section of Scranton is instead showing signs of destruction. President of the Green Ridge Neighborhood Association, Laura Agostini, says vandals recently targeted Sturges Park on N. Washington Avenue \u2014 what locals call Pretzel Park \u2014 for a second time.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThere was a bunch of beer cans, and these two trees had been knocked over. The city planted these trees in the past year or two. I don’t remember, and they’ve been destroyed,\u201d said Laura Agostini, president of the Green Ridge Neighborhood Association.<\/p>\n
A park bench was also moved into the center garden, which trampled plants and flowers that Agostini says volunteers work hard to plant and maintain.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it takes effort and money for us to come out and clean, and mulch, and plant flowers, and we don’t want to see it destroyed,\u201d Agostini said.<\/p>\n
Agostini says keeping the park looking its best requires the city’s upkeep and takes countless volunteer hours throughout the year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also hold various events here, where we have a Christmas tree lighting, and Easter egg hunt, so we all want to maintain it because this is used by many of the neighbors. It’s a great place to bring the kids to ride their bikes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The association recently spoke with the city about installing security cameras.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are cameras installed at Crowley Park, but we’ve been told by the city that we don’t have enough crime and that we don’t need them here,\u201d explained Agostini.<\/p>\n
Now, neighbors are left repairing the damage once again while hoping the vandalism comes to an end.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut, we’re experiencing more and more problems, and we really think having cameras here in the park will help deter it,\u201d said Agostini.<\/p>\n
Agostini says the association will continue maintaining the park and encourages residents to report suspicious activity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Newswatch 16’s Valeria Qui\u00f1ones spoke with the president of the community’s neighborhood association about what they’re doing to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-207112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}