CCP 02-23-2010 - Laserfiche WebLink

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-2 - Jeanne Lyke, resident, said her son is Tony. He was here last month. Her son is friends with Jake and Trevor is their neighbor. Her son and the other boys love going to Freedom. They take pride in that park. It is place they can go and not get into trouble. Jake stated that there might be problems at the park, but closing the skate park will not solve the problem. There are other areas in the area where problems occur, not just in the skate park area. Ray Tandeski, VIP, stated it has been a long road since May. The slide show impressed him with things he wasn't aware of within the system. To see the boys take over was exciting. He went into Freedom with the graffiti vehicle. He went to the table/shelter area. There was no graffiti. The painting of the skate park equipment makes it look like a totally different park. It is in its best shape since it was installed. There are a lot of younger kids coming up there now. The people in the neighborhood were instrumental in getting the issues to the attention of the City. They pursued this and persisted. He thanked them, and in particular Michelle Schicker, to see this through. Now we have a good park back. Tandeski intends to be involved next year. He stated if there is any trouble they could get it to him and he would pass it along to Officer Hamdorf. Tandeski stated he has worked himself out of a (graffiti removing) job. He has not seen any new graffiti on his last time out. Tandeski said he is so proud of a whole bunch of people. It has been such a good collaborative effort. Samuelson stated she is really impressed by what everyone has done. It warms her heart. It is such a good model of what people can do when they work together. She is really proud of everyone and she would recommend that we continue on the same track. . Trevorrow commented that many got involved and now everyone feels a sense of ownership. Things are very positive now. Harreld thank them stating they seta good example for how we can keep an eye on each of our City parks. Frischman asked the Commission if they wanted to ask for updates or how they wanted to proceed. Norton stated he liked the idea of having updates so we can be aware if there is anything new or upcoming. Frischman stated some of the kids at the skate park mentioned they would ask people to leave the park if they were doing things that were not allowed in the park. Frischman felt concern about residual activity that may occur in the neighborhood that previously would have been caught at the park. Officer Hamdorf stated there are no numbers on this, but by his observations he would say no. What they were referring to when they asked people to leave the park was the smoking issue and some would go across the street to smoke. Jake agreed that smoking is usually the main problem and occasionally vandalism. Officer Hamdorf said since we started the program we have not seen any new area of concern, prior to this we did see some spill over onto 13`h St. and 23 a Ave. The graffiti usually arrived first. But now we haven't seen graffiti in a while.