Bicyclists want equal access to skate park
By DAN FELDNER, Staff Writer dfeldner@minotdailynews.comA group of about a dozen young bicyclists appeared before the Minot Park Board Tuesday evening asking for the opportunity to ride in the concrete skate park in Roosevelt Park that is used for skate boarders and roller bladers, but is currently off-limits to bikes.
Members of the group noted they feel it is unfair that bikes are excluded from the park and they risk getting a ticket just for using a public facility that was built with youth in mind. They also said many young children, not just teenagers, would like the chance to ride their bikes in the skate park.
Commissioner Ron Bieri said he recently had a short discussion with a park police officer about that very subject, and that the officer made a good point about the situation.
"The bike riders don't have a place to go to do the kinds of things that they do, just like several years ago, the skate boarders didn't have a place to go," Bieri said.
While Bieri was sympathetic to the bikers' cause, he did have some safety concerns about mixing large bikes with skate boards and roller blades. Bieri did say, however, that the officer believes there is a good deal of cooperation and sportsmanship between bikers and skate boarders in the skate park and that, yes, the fact that bikers are actively using the skate park has not gone unnoticed.
The other members of the park board were also willing to work with the group to find a solution to the problem, and Commissioner Robert Walstad told the group he was pleased they had decided to go through the proper channels to get the situation resolved, which is exactly how the skate park came to be built in the first place.
Commissioner Connie Feist said she had seen skate parks in other areas that handled skate board and bike traffic with no problems and wondered whether there were insurance reasons for making the skate park in Roosevelt Park off-limits to bikes. Ron Merritt, director of parks, said he would check into the reasons against allowing bikes in the skate park.
President Robert Petry told the group that while the board would look into the situation, the wheels of government will never be accused of moving quickly. He said it would be at least a couple of months before they could decide on whether to allow bikes into the skate park, and it could stretch into years if it was determined that a new facility specifically built for bikes should be constructed.
It was decided to let the parks committee look into the situation at its next meeting Sept. 9, which the group was invited to attend if they could, and then send a report back to the board.
Petry thanked the group for taking the time to present their case to the park board, and told them they were free to leave unless they wanted to hang around for the rest of the meeting. After the kids made a hasty exit, the approval of minutes, bills and salaries was taken care of before a rate increase at Souris Valley Golf Course was discussed.
Walstad said the rates at Souris Valley have fallen under those of neighboring courses, and that the farther they let the rates slip below that of other courses, the tougher it would be to raise them in the future. A 5 percent rate increase across the board and the elimination of the weekday rate was suggested as a fair solution. Petry said the costs of running the course have only gone up recently, and Bieri noted that a recent article in a golfing magazine called the rates of golf courses in the Minot area "ridiculously fair," which he noted could easily translate to dirt cheap.
A motion to raise the rates by 5 percent and eliminate the weekday rate passed unanimously.
Rates were also a topic of discussion for Roosevelt Park Zoo. It was proposed to raise the rates for adults to $6.50 and children to $3.50, an increase of 50 cents for both, and to charge $6 for the senior and group rate.
Feist noted that she believed the rates at the zoo were also ridiculously fair, and thought that the zoo was an economical outing for families even with the increase. She also said that package rates for the zoo and Roosevelt Park Pool should be looked at in the future since the two facilities are in such close proximity to each other. The motion to raise zoo rates passed unanimously.
The cleaning of the Theodore Roosevelt statue in Roosevelt Park was also on the agenda. A call for bids to clean the statue had been made and the board received only one response, which was from Jonathan Taggart, the expert who had earlier examined the statue and recommended that it be cleaned.
His bid was for $11,946.55, which was within the $15,000 grant the City of Minot had pledged toward the project. The board accepted the bid, but it is yet to be determined when the restoration will take place. The park maintenance department is still doing rock work at the base of the statue, and Taggart had said he couldn't begin his work until sometime in October.
Merritt said that although Taggart thought the work could be done this year, it was possible things would have to be put off until next spring if the weather didn't cooperate.
