With all the upcoming activities vandalism is the the last thing the Effingham Park District maintenance crew wants to deal with. Earlier this week the office area at Evergreen Hollow Park was broken into and vandalized. News Watch's Charlee Caudill spoke with Effingham park district maintenance director Jim Raddatz about the damage. This time of year, baseball is usually what's on the mind of Effingham Park District Maintenance Director Jim Raddatz. But this week his crew has a different agenda. Erasing graffiti, cleaning up broken glass, and repairing windows. Vandals damaged the park district's shop for a second time. "Thursday night, overnight the building was broken into our maintenance shed. They broke out a window on the North end, came through the shed, broke out another window on a door to come through here, and just kind of ransacked the place," Raddatz says. Raddatz says this is the second time the building has been vandalized in the last two weeks. "First time was more or less the same thing, but we didn't have the doors locked, so they just walked right in." Effingham resident, Ruth Rhodes, brings her grandchildren to the park a few times a month, and never expected anything like this would happen to such a nice facility. "Here we've got this big complex. You would think the kids would have something to do now. There's nothing you can do. If they want to do it, they're gonna do it." Raddatz hopes the vandals are stopped ... so the crew can get back to focusing on set up for baseball. The maintenance crew says the hardest part about clean up was the graffiti removal. Raddatz says there was about a $1,000 worth of damage done to the facility. An investigation is still on-going. If you have any information about the incident, contact the Effingham Police Department.
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