BRATTLEBORO — Mac Gordon, Brattleboro: There seems to be a BASIC (Brattleboro Area Skatepark Is Coming) problem here. (Pun intended.)
Usually, in order to achieve a successful outcome for a project, it's first necessary to do a needs assessment - in this case, canvass the local community to ask: Is there a demand for a skatepark? Are people willing to fund such a project?
If the answer is yes, then there is a good chance for a positive outcome.
Without such an assessment, BASIC is just hoping that things will work out.
As it is, there obviously isn't the local support necessary. Very little money has been raised.
Let it go, guys, and move on.
Scotty Dixon, Brattleboro: Mac, there is plenty of support in town. I see the need, and the want, every day.
Nobody has any money to give for anything right now. The kids don't have cars, and most of their parents are either too busy, tired, uneducated on the subject, or high to give any support. Most of the older guys like me are either busy with school or work, and also do not have any money.
If there weren't any support, this issue wouldn't have been going on for over 15 years. This same struggle, for all the same reasons and arguments, happens in every town across the country which tries to get a skatepark. It's just how it is.
Dot Lenhart, Brattleboro: My grandson is 9 and has been skateboarding since he was 1. Really - we have videos.
Skateboarding is the thing he wants to do most - each and every day. Through skateboarding, he has developed strength, balance, endurance, and flexibility, as well as good sportsmanship.
He does go to the Boys and Girls Club to skateboard, but the hours are limited, and there is a fee.
My grandson has told me that when he sees the “Resite the Skate Park” signs around town, they make him feel bad and make him feel that people are judging him even though they have not even met him. He's a really good kid.
Believe it or not, I skateboarded back when I was a teenager, and I have the skateboards to prove it. My son also skateboards.
My daughter recently discovered a free skatepark in Northampton, Mass. From a comfortable bench, she can watch my grandson skate while also watching her daughter play on the playground. Ideal!
I think we could have that type of family, wheel-friendly park here in Brattleboro, if only people would drop their prejudices and truly begin to support our local youth in participating in a healthy sport. I have lived in town for 26 years, and I firmly believe that there is room in the Crowell Lot for a modest skatepark to serve the large numbers of youth and young adults in our area who skate.
Peter Whitley, Oceanside, Calif.: It is amazing that so much bureaucracy can exist in such a small town. Whatever happened to good, old-fashioned community, where people did what was best for their kids and supported those things that they loved to do?
It's obvious that there is a need for this skatepark because people - Brattleboro residents - have been rallying for it for years. The need cannot be made clearer, and the site is excellent in all factors that are worth measuring.
We at the Tony Hawk Foundation have provided guidance that we are confident will produce the best possible facility for this community, and your local advocates have worked tirelessly to adhere to these best practices.
The town's leadership and a small but vocal opposition have been able to stall and redirect the process again and again.
It's time for this to happen. Enough with the obstructionist tactics.
Andy Davis, Brattleboro: First of all, thank you to The Commons for providing a forum where people use their real names and hometowns. That's refreshing for an online discussion.
To Peter Whitely, writing from California, it is not bureaucracy that has troubled this project, it is democracy.
It is clear you have little knowledge of our town. The Commons got it right when it reports: “In 2009, the Selectboard approached the group saying it had a site for the park. The board then formalized BASIC as a town committee and charged it with constructing the park at the Crowell Lot” [“Limbo for the skatepark?” News, Oct. 9].
What was the Selectboard thinking? By skipping a fully transparent site-selection process, the 2009 board set into motion the conflict that continues to the present.
I have heard it expressed on more than one occasion that the Selectboard offered the skateboarders this site believing the group would never be able to raise the money. Town Meeting representatives were bypassed - another miscue in the process.
To Dot Lenhart: Putting forward again that questioners of Crowell Lot are anti-child is the most overused and exploited part of this process. This strategy is probably one of the main reasons the community has not stepped forward to back this project financially or politically. Just as rational questioning of school budgets is not anti-child, rational questioning of siting recreational facilities is not anti-child.
The opponents of building at the Crowell Lot are not the ones who have stopped this project. Why is the skateboard park today without sufficient funds, with no approved design, and no Development Review Board permit? Answer: Lack of public process and a failure to sell the project to the wider community. To build at a popular and much revered piece of public property requires communication and cooperation.
Opponents of the Crowell Lot site are actually part of the solution to the goal of building a skatepark. Work with the wider community to have a transparent and criteria-based site-selection process, and we might all be surprised by what we can accomplish together. Some voices seem to be moving in this direction.
Lenhart: First of all, your statement that the Selectboard “offered the skateboarders this site believing the group would never be able to raise the money” is not at all based on any facts, but hearsay. Gossip does not have a place in these discussions.
Second, I am not sure how you interpreted my comment, but I did not use the phrase “anti-child.”
Third, if anyone is exploiting, it is the opposing group, gathering more support for their “Re-Site” campaign by playing upon nostalgia and not reality.
I drive by the Crowell Lot nearly every day, and it is often empty. It is certainly not heavily used. It seems that those who speak so loudly about the Lot don't actually spend much time there.
I do believe that the opponents have an agenda to prevent the skatepark from being there at all costs. And I do mean costs. I wonder what all those signs cost and who has paid for them? Let's have some full disclosure here, speaking of transparency.
In addition, I might remind you that many different sites have been examined, and this one has been chosen as the most appropriate. Let's think of the greater good of the community rather than the good of an elite few.
Dixon: Andy, I've heard you and members of your group often state that you are part of the solution to getting a skatepark, and that you really support a skatepark in our town. I've always wanted to ask you this question: If we can't have a section of your park, and after all of you meet your responsibilities in helping us find a new location, what will you say to the opposition group that comes from that location?
Davis: Dot, I was not quoting you. I was referring to a frequent attempt to characterize the opposition to the Crowell Lot site as expressing prejudice toward children. I did not suggest that you used those exact words.
You make a good point about hearsay and rumor. I apologize for passing that point about funding along. I was trying to characterize an attitude that has been part of more than one conversation.
Perhaps it is time to simply find a solution, raise the money, and build it. This is my main interest at this point.
David Longsmith, Brattleboro: Oh, Andy ... the truth just seems to continually escape you. What else can I say, other than to repeat the truths of the matter again and again? The design has been presented to the town and approved. The permit was voted on and granted. The Town Meeting Representatives voted unanimously in favor of the project. The process did not start in 2009; the search for a skatepark has been going on for many years - decades, even.
Oh, and Peter Whitley? He works for the Tony Hawk Foundation, the foremost advocates and funders of skateparks in the United States. When my wife Sara and I wrote a grant requesting funding, the foundation sent people to Brattleboro to assess the town and the siting of the skatepark. They also assessed the need and found Brattleboro to be greatly in need and made a grant to the project over hundreds of other locations. Their grant was the equivalent of a stamp of approval by an organization whose mission is to build successful skateparks in communities where there is demonstrated need. But you and your amateur activists don't pay any attention to experts, do you?
When self-proclaimed police of the process and experts on the siting of skateparks show themselves to be be ignorant of the vagaries of siting a skatepark and of the process that Brattleboro went through to get where we are now, their actions seem so in line with the Tea Party in a country that is bent on obstruction and wallows in misinformation and bullying. This is the company that you and others of your ilk find yourselves with. The recent Reformer editorial was spot on: These continued actions by Re-Site are a real pox on our town.
Lenhart: Thanks, Andy. I do think we have the same goal in mind.