Click to watch raw video of the cleanup | Click to watch Doug Miller's report

Sometimes skateboarding in Watonga Parkway Park in northwest Houston is a family affair, but what happened there recently was hardly family friendly.

Vandals hit the park hard last weekend, creating what city officials described as one of the worst graffiti messes they’ve ever seen at a Houston park.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” Houston Parks Department’s Thomas Turner said.

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Parks officials had to cleanup Watonga Parkway Park after vandals tagged it over the weekend.

“I said, ‘Gee, man, this never happened before out here.  First time, since I been here for a while.”

Unfortunately, someone had to clean up the graffiti, and someone had to foot the bill --  namely, the taxpayers.

“And this is really bad.  Every piece of equipment got hit in a big way—not just one or two pieces.  So this is pretty startling,” Mark Ross, who also works for the Houston Parks Department, said.

Taxpayers in Houston paid an estimated $2,000 tab to clean up the mess left by vandals in this park. 

What’s more, Parks Department officials say they appropriate about $230,000 of taxpayers’ money a year to paint over graffiti. 

A makeshift skate park near the Watonga Park skate park illustrates the close relationship between skating and tagging.

“Like, if it’s freshly painted, it’s like fresh meat.  They’re just gonna tag it again, until it looks the same, you know?” skater Ron Thompson said.

Thanks to Houston taxpayers’ money, the Watonga skate park is a clean slate … but keeping parks cleaned of graffiti is a tough task.