Over the summer, Friends of the Williamsbridge Oval Park, a volunteer group that advocates for the well being of the park, conducted a night walk around the park and discovered that 21 lights, nearly half of the lights surrounding Oval Park, weren’t functioning.

More than three months later, and after several follow-ups by the Friends and media inquiries, the lights were finally fixed. The episode sheds light on the trouble residents have in navigating the city’s vast bureaucracy.

Elisabeth von Uhl, one of the members of Friends, said that around July 26, Parks Department officials told her they had contacted the Department of Transportation (DOT), which is responsible for light maintenance in city parks, about the non-functioning lights.

Von Uhl’s group conducted another check of the lights on Aug. 23 and discovered that none of the lights had been fixed.

This raised a lot of safety concerns in the community. On July 15, Diego Sinchi, 28, was shot and killed in Oval Park over a dispute allegedly involving an iPhone.

“For security reasons, it is important to fix these lights in the park,” said William Moro, a local resident of Bainbridge Avenue. “There are some people that jog or walk their dogs at night. There needs to be a sense of safety in the park.”

Von Uhl wrote a letter to DOT on Aug. 24. She then spoke to Bronx Borough Parks Commissioner Constance Moran on Sept. 30 on the phone. Moran told von Uhl that the park’s current construction projects were preventing the DOT from fixing the lights.

On Oct. 15, Montgomery Dean, a DOT spokesperson, said DOT had repaired six lights, but were still encountering construction conflicts.

Friends then enlisted the help of local Council Member Oliver Koppell, who made calls into both city agencies.
Finally, Dean said that, as of Nov. 3, all the lights in the Oval had been fixed.

In the future, if there is anything that needs to be fixed in the parks, Parks Department spokesperson Jesslyn Moser encouraged residents to call 311, which the Friends did, more than three months ago.