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City, students team up to make skatepark a summer reality
Combined task force works on issue of staffing
Baker: move 'post haste'
By Oakley Brooks
Saratoga may get a new mobile skatepark as soon as the close of the school year this spring, which would cap a long push by local teens to get a sanctioned space to skate.
Vice Mayor Evan Baker said March 12 that he saw "no reason why the skatepark facility should not be up and running before the end of school," and he urged city staff to move "post-haste" to make the park a reality.
City council members first expressed unanimous interest in a park following a Jan. 7 presentation by engineer Ron Powers, who showed the council a collection of ramps and jumps that could be towed in a trailer to different locations throughout the city and could be stowed away to control usage.
Beginning in February, a task force of city staffers, local students, and parks commissioners met weekly to bring the park closer to fruition. Staffers put together a cost estimate of a full-time attendant for the park, responding to the city council's strong feeling that the park should be supervised.
The group also indentified five potential sites, through which the park would be rotated--three different parking lots around city hall, as well as open blacktop at Redwood Middle School and Congress Springs Park.
Redwood students involved with the task force even polled every student at their school--Principal Christopher Farmer held up a schoolwide silent reading period for a brief spell March 5 to allow a survey to be completed.
Of the 900 students polled, 690 said they supported a skate park and 145 said they would be willing to pay at least $25 a season to the use the park.
The coming of the skatepark will provide an approved space for teens who are used to being chased out off sidewalks and blacktops across the city. It will also mark the end of a long journey for task force member and Redwood eighth-grader Albert Chiang. He helped develop the school survey as part of a core humanities class with teacher Marie Bordeleau, along with task force students Grant Simon and Tony Yen, and four other Redwood eighth-graders.
Chiang had collaborated on a drawing for a new park during the 2000-'01 school year with a member of the city planning staff. But when that staff member left the department, Chiang's plans fell through as well.
He's continued to work for a park this year, even picking up a little bureaucrat speak along the way.
"I believe that a skatepark would be very beneficial to the city of Saratoga," Chiang flatly told the city council on March 12. Chiang and his task force still have to work out operation details for the facility, including an identification and parental waiver program.
Mayor Nick Streit urged the group to look into a program in Santa Clara where kids have parents' signatures on the back of their ID cards. The group will also have to finalize safety rules for the park.
Vice Mayor Baker said he would like to put an age minimum on the park, but Youth Commissioner Andy Miller urged the city not to limit ridership at the park.
Recreation Director Joan Pisani and City Attorney Richard Taylor are still working on how best to handle liability issues at the park. Association of Bay Area Government's Risk Manager Marcus Beverly said recently that state law gives cities limited immunity from suits brought by over the age of 14 skaters, provided a park has adequate signage describing the risks of skating. He adds that through a recent boom of parks in Bay Area cities in the last six to seven years, he's seen only two claims brought against cities and processed by the association.
Pisani estimated that staffing at the new park will cost $14,600. Powers' collection of ramps, rails and jumps will run the city another $20,685.
Powers will be bringing the park components to Saratoga for a trial run on April 3, outside the Warner Hutton House teen center on Fruitvale Avenue.
The skatepark task force is mulling over how best to inform kids of the park's steadily changing location throughout the summer. The youth commission site, maintained by task force member Abhik Pramanik, is one potential contact point, as well as a proposed hotline number.
In the meantime, contact Pisani at 408.868.1250.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
