Company offers to move skate park

Staff report

struthers

It’s that time of year again.

The kids will be getting out of school soon, and many of them will want to use the city’s skate park — to the dismay of neighbors across the street who complain that they’re noisy, they litter and they swear — loudly.

For the past two years, neighbors on Sexton Street across from the fenced, concrete park near the city building have made their displeasure known with large signs wrapped around their porches that declare city hall has dumped the park there and it is destroying their property values.

They want the park moved, and now, the city has an offer to have it moved for free, city Councilwoman Carol Crytzer told the rest of council Wednesday.

Allied Waste Services has offered to move the ramps and re-create the skate park in the city’s Mauthe Park.

Crytzer said, though, that some residents who live near Mauthe Park have said that park is noisy enough, and they don’t want the skate park there compounding that problem.

The skate park was built in 2006 with $70,000 in donations. The Struthers Fraternal Order of Police bought two city lots at Sexton and Elm streets for $3,500 and sold them to the city for $1 on the condition that a skate park be built there, said Councilman Mike Patrick. If the city moves the skate park, the FOP might want its money or the property back, he said Wednesday.

The council will consider the issue at an upcoming parks and recreation committee meeting.