LETTER OF THE WEEK

Thank you, Mike Schaefer, for your Community Commentary published in the

Daily Pilot today about the skateboard park site (“Chosen site for skate

park not good enough,” Jan. 4). It’s an inappropriate if not downright

insulting location.

I have been a skateboarder since the age of 12, and at the age of 37,

that makes 25 years. It is my primary sport/activity and has been since I

started. In the last couple years, I’ve watched cities from all across

America building skate parks by the hundreds. In almost every instance

they’ve become immediately the most-used recreational facilities in the

city.

Costa Mesa is aware of this, as they’ve done research on all the local

skate parks within a couple hours of here and have seen what’s worked and

what hasn’t. They also made graphs showing different levels of

acceptability for at least 30 locations throughout the city, and this

site was never at the top of that list. I guess the City Council forgot

to read the list, or listen to those working for the city who were paid

to create it.

So why is it that they chose to put our skate park in a most

inappropriate and unsavory location within our city? When I drove by and

looked at this site (on Charle and Hamilton streets), I realized the City

Council must have very little respect for the youth in its community.

First, since original approval of a plan to build a skate park, they’ve

dragged the process out for month after month, definitely sending a

message to the kids that they don’t matter in the political process. Now,

lets tell the kids we’re going to put them in an area where no parent is

going to drop them off and let them skate by themselves, and they’ve got

to wonder what’s next -- fourth-grade field trips to introduce them to

the local drug dealers?

That park will be tagged the first night, and then they’ll say that the

skaters are gangsters. I know that skaters aren’t the most vocal

political group in the city, but skaters do deserve some respect in Costa

Mesa. Does the city know that of about seven substantial skateboard

factories in the United States, three of them are located in Costa Mesa,

employing many people and making tens of thousands of skateboards per

month? But I guess since they don’t produce sales tax revenues, that

doesn’t really matter. Just ask the residents behind the new Home Depot

on Harbor Boulevard how powerful sales tax revenues are, even when all

the benefit is to corporations with no roots or respect for Costa Mesa.

I was looking forward to taking my 6- and 7-year-old boys to go skate

with me at the new skate park located in the city I live in as well as

own homes and businesses in. But now I guess I’ll have to continue to

drive them to skate in the safely located skate parks in cities like

Corona, Mission Viejo, Carlsbad and Vista, which are located in nice

parks in appropriate areas of the city. There we’ll enjoy skating in a

great atmosphere with all the other people riding skateboards that were

manufactured in the city with the worst skate park location in Southern

California -- Costa Mesa.

Please rethink this obviously poor decision, and give the kids (and us

old guys) the respect we all deserve. Thank you, Mike Schaefer, for

having the guts to tell it like it is -- You should run for City Council.

JIM GRAY

Costa Mesa