The Municipality of Butel has begun a full reconstruction of all children's and sports playgrounds - damaged and worn-out sections will be repaired. Alongside that, video equipment for monitoring and surveillance will be installed at every playground and park, with the aim of preventing vandalism.

The repairs are a straight gain. A broken swing or a bent slide is not an aesthetic problem but a safety one - and if the municipality really does get round every location, that is work you can see immediately.

"Children's and sports playgrounds are our shared responsibility and we have to look after them. These are places where generations grow up, where friendships and unforgettable memories are made," said the mayor of Butel, Darko Kostovski, appealing to citizens to treat urban equipment with care.

The second half of the announcement needs more detail

The cameras are what deserves a few questions, not because surveillance is inherently objectionable, but because these are spaces where children are filmed every day.

Who will have access to the footage? How long is it kept? Where is it stored and who secures it? Has a data protection impact assessment been carried out, as the regulations on video surveillance of public spaces require? Will there be visible signage that the area is being recorded?

These are not theoretical questions. A camera system on every playground in a municipality creates an archive of footage of minors. If that footage is well governed, nobody will notice it and it will do its job - it will catch whoever tears down a swing at night. If it is not, the problem will surface later and it will not be small.

The municipality is also announcing new playgrounds. That is policy worth having - Butel is not a district overflowing with maintained public space, so every new playground is a real gain for families there.

All that is missing is one clarification the municipality can easily give, and is worth giving before the cameras go live: the rules on who watches, for how long and on what legal basis. Equipment is bought once. Parents' trust is much harder to win back.