After closing the playground at Posse Grounds Park on May 31, the city of Sedona has been renovating the play­ground for the last few months, finally reopening it on Oct. 18.

Ask anyone under the age of 10 about their favorite spot in the city and they will, on the whole, point to Sunset Park, its playground and its ever-popular Splash Pad, which is gener­ally packed in the summer.

While the Splash Pad is the park’s highlight for Sedona’s youngest residents, Sunset Park features two play areas, one for toddlers and one for older kids, but the two groups often intermingle, with the interface between them being the Splash Pad.

It’s amazing how something that’s essentially just a water pipe with various brightly-colored spigots to soak children on a hot summer afternoon can keep kids enthralled for hours. Adult life should be so easy.

Posse Grounds Park’s old playground was certainly a good one, though it lacked some of the amenities that Sunset has, most notably a shade structure.

The big circular slides on the main structure could get very hot in the afternoons, rendering them unusable by kids, especially those playing there after school. The rest of the structure and the other equipment was certainly enjoyable. The wood chips could be messy but less so than sand.

As a parent with a very active toddler, my wife or I take her to Sunset Park every weekend and often during the week in the summer, but as one park can become tedious, we mix it up with trips to Posse Grounds Park, Riverfront Park in Cottonwood, or the commonly-known Kiwanis Park in the village of Oak Creek.

The new renovations at Posse Grounds include slides, swings, climbing boards, a catwalk, rope ladders and a cyclone spinner, as well as a resurfaced play area, all under a sunshade. The big structure is a large treehouse-themed playground that is the center of kids’ activities. I’m glad that my daughter has two places to play and will show them to her twin siblings when they get old enough to run around with her.

My daughter in particular enjoys “the gears because they spin,” as well as the cyclone because “it spins.” I’m sensing a theme here. The large carousel has a net jungle gym built into it, so kids can spin around or climb up it, sometimes both, when they really get into it.

Every time my daughter, wife and our twins have gone to the new playground, it’s been packed, which is the surest measure of success.

If you have kids, or have relatives’ or friends’ kids come to town to visit, take them to Posse Grounds to burn off some energy, enjoy a good project built by our city and appreciate what Sedona’s Parks and Recreation Department can do.

The new park cost just over half a million dollars, but no Sedona parent will complain because every cent of it makes our kids happy. This was an example of public tax dollars well spent. Projects like these are what residents want their city to provide. Residents want public amenities: Playgrounds, a free or low-cost transit system for residents, community events, recreation centers, pools, public facilities and community services. Places where residents can go to just “be.”

In Sedona, there is no better illustration of the contrast between tax dollars well spent and tax dollars wasted than comparing the popular new playground at Posse Grounds Park to the boondoggle of a tourist-focused parking lot only a few hundreds yards to the northeast that wastes a parcel of land in order to shuttle tourists to yet another spot on the edge of town. A lawn for residents to sit and look at the red rocks would have been a better use of the money.

The reopening of the playground came shortly before Sedona Parks and Recreation hosted one of Sedona’s largest public events: The Safe & Fun Trick-or-Treat in Uptown.

This year the trick-or-treating included a scavenger hunt. Young trick-or-treaters and their families visited numerous locations along the circuit in Uptown. It was a surreptitious way to showcase Uptown for residents who may rarely go there, letting them see what’s new, what’s available and where to go later in the year for holiday shopping, dinner, or finding a Sedona gift for a friend or relative.

The hunt simul­taneously encouraged kids and their families to make the full circuit from Forest Road to the Sedona Arts Center and back, collecting candy, showing off their costumes, meeting friends and enjoying the best holiday in the city.

My daughter, the dragon, and I, the Jedi, ran into friends of hers from school, city staffers, Sedona Fire District fire­fighters, Sedona Police Department Sgts. Michael Dominguez and Nathan Dorfman, a few candidates and elected officials and old friends who now have children of their own.

The Sedona Parks and Rec Department has a clear view of what’s important to the children and families in the city. It would behoove our newly-elected Sedona City Council members to avoid getting bogged down by myopic NIMBYs at council meetings or their cabal of myopic, self-serving, partisan campaign donors who attend these public events.

Instead, they should see what residents enjoy, ask families what they want their city to provide and govern from the public space rather than the partisan corner. They won’t go wrong.