Struthers officials issue new hours, rules for city skate park

STRUTHERS — The city plans to reopen a skate park across from neighbors who’ve had enough of profanity there, but there will be new rules and shortened hours.

Mayor Terry Stocker, safety- service director Ed Wildes and other city officials are wrestling with the problem of what to do about the Stewart Street skate park, which opened three years ago on city property near the municipal building and has had to be closed every year because of problems, they said.

Kids using the park have broken windows in the street- department garage nearby, thrown trash on the ground and have even broken benches in the park, which was built with donated money, they said.

“Now, it’s the profanity,” Stocker said. “We want to allow them to have fun, but they have to be respectful of the neighbors.”

There can be upward of 20 kids at a time inside the paved, fenced area, said John Webb at his home on Stewart Street. A sign in his yard, one of three in a row along the street, proclaims the need for peace and quiet and a desire to take the neighborhood back.

He said the taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for the vandalism and trash at the park.

“They throw trash and don’t pick it up, and it blows in our yard,” he said.

The profane language, he said, comes from kids as young as 8 and 10 years old. “I hear it down in the basement.”

“I can’t have my grandkids out here,” said Brenda Webb, his wife.

“We need to do a better job managing it,” the mayor said. “Step it up a notch.”

He and Wildes said the problem is that the city does not have the money to pay someone to supervise the facility.

It would have been better, Wildes said, to put the skate park at the city’s Mauthe Park. But he doesn’t believe it’s feasible to move it now.

Stocker said the skate park was built near the city building because it could be policed more frequently there.

Wildes said, however, that police are busy during their shifts, and there may not be anyone available to go over from the city building to the park immediately if there’s a complaint.

Stocker and Wildes said new signs, expected by the end of this week, will spell out rules for using the park: No profanity, no littering, no smoking. Violators will be prosecuted and banned from the park.

Webb said he would like the city to loosen the ramps at the park and relocate them. “The kids don’t pay attention to signs,” he said.

Stocker said that when the park reopens, hours will be limited from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the summer and on weekends and from 4 to 6 p.m. on school nights.

Neighbors have reported, though, that kids have climbed the fence around the closed park and used it anyway.

Brenda Webb said she’s heard kids in the park at midnight and at 1 a.m. at times.

Stocker said he isn’t sure when the park will reopen — it will stay closed at least until the new signs arrive.

After that, he said, relations will have to improve between skaters and the neighbors.

“If it continues to escalate, we’ll need to ask council if we want to operate the park,” he added.

starmack@vindy.com