Probably off topic yet related in a strange rant way.
Over the past ten or more years, more and more cities pressured to cut costs everywhere except their benefit packages, came up with an idea to cut costs at children's playgrounds city wide, including public schools as well.
Substituting WOOD CHIPS for the soft playable sand we once remember playing with our play mobile trucks and tractors in. Kids could play in shorts or even diapers. Mom's and Dad's would sit in the sand and play with their kids too. I know about this as I was sitting in the council meetings of cities in my career. I've seen the proposals submitted and not one of them ever mentioned the kids that would be the users of such an idea.
The concept was to use free wood chips from the never ending supply cities have and replace all sand usage as that would save sand replacement costs and upkeep. They only discussed the cost savings. Not what this does to play safety. There's another reason, almost insidious in it's purpose and that it was proposed that the chips would reduce playground usage and thus reduce any total cost of liability injury claims, which there was only a few a year in the first place. And they also say chips are cleaner. Which is a big lie. I'm pretty sure these were republiqans with these decisions. I'm almost sure of it, because they always bent over backwards for businesses who were asking for help against legit citizen complaints. It was sickening to watch.
Seriously, this liability reason was on some proposal bullet points. What kind of wrinkled up pencil neck actually wants to limit childrens play time and community sharing time? Only a person who lives alone without family and works as an insurance lawyer could come up with something like this. But the final decisions were always listed as saving tax money. And cities always want to look like they are saving money to the citizens, while they each have two city paid cars and let their kids drive one out the back end of the city behind closed doors.
Any ways, wood chips harbor diseases, bugs and germs and not withstanding all the slivers and cut knees from sharp chip edges it's been very successful at emptying the parks of playful kids. Only the parks which are few and far between that have experimented with reprocessed vehicle tires are at lease a little better than wood chips on kids and peoples bodies. But that costs money too.
But this piece is basically about cities and government passing laws and programs that are detrimental to the citizen while keeping the bucks in their pocket instead. And acting like they're doing us a favor and care about their citizens.
