A field at Pangolin Park will be fixed soon, DPW chief Randy Woodbury says. OBSERVER Photo by M.J. Stafford

Chautauqua County employees recently did significant rutting damage to the Pangolin Street Park, but city of Dunkirk Public Works Director Randy Woodbury downplayed it Thursday in a phone interview.

Woodbury explained that the county workers were using a roller to tamp down the ball fields at nearby Wright Park, under a shared services agreement with the city.

“I think they thought it was a good idea to do this one too,” he said. “But I’m disappointed… (the roller) got stuck in the mud.” The Pangolin Street fields were not on their schedule, he said.

Woodbury isn’t too worried about the damage, noting, “Dirt’s easy to fix.” He said his employees would wait until the field dries out, then “fix it in no time.”

He went on to say, “I appreciate the ambition, but if we were headed over there, we should have had one of the (city) parks guys check it out first.”

In the future, Woodbury said he might have seasonal city DPW employees check fields ahead of any rolling jobs by county workers, to make sure they are dry enough. When the county did the recent job, he didn’t have enough manpower for that, he said.

“I don’t want to discourage the county workers. They did an excellent job with the (ball) fields, everything is fantastic at Wright Park because of that roller,” he added.

The damage was “a surprise, but it’s not a big deal,” Woodbury concluded.