07/24/2021
Hello community
The bike park: let’s talk about it, the online discourse has surprised us.
We are volunteers with jobs and families, lives and responsibilities. And we care about the community. And we have never and will never make a decision with malice. We are doing our best to do what’s best.
The Gravelbourg Skate Park committee has existed for almost four years now. In that time we’ve done a lot of work fundraising to get an asphalt pad built and set up a skate park that would be functional and fun for all ages and various recreation options. And it is functional and fun! You should check it out!
When the town agreed to let us use a portion of land for a skate park, they generously offered a lot more space than we needed. Some talk of what to use the space for resulted in what we called the bike park. Maintenance responsibilities of this large area
transferred from the town to the committee.
After years of trying to build up the committee, trying to find willing volunteers and helpers, and trying to make sustainable plans, it became clear to us that the bike park couldn’t continue unless we were going to either be resigned to it filling with weeds, or to calling it a space for children to play and then dousing it with harmful chemicals. We weren’t comfortable with either option.
A good bike park that can stand the test of time needs a firm foundation. The 6-7 small mounds of dirt that we took down were already sinking and shrinking rapidly because a bike park needs constant rebuilding and maintenance. More research and planning would be required to make a bike park really work in the future.
A good bike park would require thoughtful planning. The placement of the mounds of dirt was random and had no flow. Bikers could ride down the big hill, hobble over a bump, and then start over. Most of the 6-7 dirt lumps that were removed were rarely used. We kept the big hill because it makes sense and is fun. Kids love it. The other mounds had no flow between them and didn’t justify the use of space or required upkeep.
Finally, members of the committee that were most invested in the bike park weren’t able to commit to a lifetime of involvement. No one can reasonably be expected to. We decided that the best thing we could do for the skate and bike park (and the community) in the long run was to keep it fun by keeping the big hill, make it look nice again, and turn it into something that would work in the long term by leveling the rest, and to focus our efforts on the original goal: a skate park.
As far as funds go, we appreciate all of the help and volunteer time that was put into the dirt park, but there was intentionally only ever a very small portion of funds allocated to the dirt hills portion of the park, as our main goal was always the asphalt pad, the skatepark obstacles, and recreational space. The levelling of the few mounds was done free of charge by generous volunteers.
We love our community, we love your kids. We’re just a handful of volunteers trying our best with what we’ve got.
We hope this clears up any concerns or misconceptions that you may have had.
Please remember, we are human people who live and work in your community. Your words matter. We will not engage with rage and abuse online. We are experienced enough to know that it is never productive to write negative posts, and it’s never productive to react to them in the comment section either. So we never will. That’s a boundary we have set for ourselves. We will always welcome productive input and offers to help. We will always welcome questions and suggestions. But not when they are framed in a way that is intentionally meant to spur negativity. We are doing our best and want good things for this community. Be kind. 💖
