Guest Editorial: Skate Park Update and Action
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The following guest editorial is from Ojai Valley resident Sunday Rylander.
Sometimes I can't believe how long of a journey this has been, but it looks like we are finally reaching the end of the process to get the skate park built in Ojai.
For those of you who skateboard or read the local newspapers you can't miss the fact that during this past year of fundraising for the Ojai Skate Park, and attending what feels like a thousand meetings, a 22, 000 sq. foot Fillmore skate park opened, Piru is starting the process and Moorpark was just approved to start building a 1.7 million skate park that will be finished by the end of summer! Oh... and I can't forget the amazing 40,000 sq. foot Santa Clarita skate park that opened two weeks ago.
We would greatly appreciate it if you and your children, grandchildren, neighbors and community members that support the Ojai Skate Park could join us Tuesday at the OUSD School Board meeting. It's really important that we go to this meeting and show how supported and important the Ojai skate park is to our community and see the latest plans of the Ojai skate park that our community donated $261,000 in 6 months time (totaling $361,00 with the City of Ojai's donation of $100,000) for the children to have a concrete skate park.
Dale Summersille, the City of Ojai Recreation Director, Kanten Russell of Site Design and a member of Skate Ojai will be making the presentation of the Ojai Skate Park Project to the school board.
* Tuesday, April 14th.
* 7:00 pm. (meeting begins right at 7:00pm. and there will be one presentation before the Skate Park item on the agenda)
* 414 E. Ojai Ave. in Board Room #1 (OUSD offices/Chaparral location)
At this presentation Dale will review the latest conceptual design, review the proposed rules for the day to day operations, overview of the budget, and review the budget highlights.
Here are a few comments from Dale Summersille:
There have been a number of meetings with the design team (City staff, Site Design Group and Community Works Design Group) and we hope to have a final conceptual design within the next few weeks, as well as a revised project timeline highlighting major project milestones.o The Parks & Recreation Commission approved the conceptual design at their April meeting
o City Staff and the design team are preparing to make a presentation to the OUSD School Board at their April 14 meeting – the meeting will be held at 414 E. Ojai Ave. in Board Room #1 at 7:00 pm
o Staff is anticipating to take the final design to the Planning Commission for the Design Review Permit in May
o Staff is anticipating at this time that groundbreaking will be this summer and the park will be open before Winter recess
o City Staff, Skate Ojai, Ojai Police Dept., Ventura County Fire Dept., OUSD have been meeting to review the design, discuss safety, rules of operation and the bad behavior at the park. The group will meet again later this month to review and make final recommendations for rules and day to day operation issues.
o Staff, Skate Ojai and other committee members will review the recommended rules, staff will then prepare the final skate park ordinances and municipal codes and then send them to the Parks & Recreation Commission to approve. City Council will then review and adopt the rules, ordinances and municipal codes later this year.
City Staff, the design team and Skate Ojai have been very busy the last few months working behind the scenes to get things done in order for the final design to be produced (i.e. soil survey, topographic and site surveys, drainage engineering, etc.). I thank you all for your patience and think that you will be pleased with the new park design.
Feel free to email or call me if you have any questions.
Dale Summersille
Director of Recreation
City of Ojai
805-646-1872
805-646-0201
Thank you so much for coming to one more meeting, I will see you there!
Sunday Rylander
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Comments (3)
There better be some vert!!!
Comment #1 Posted by: Old skate rat | April 30, 2009 12:16 AM
Wow, what a week it has been. One who has 3 children in Ojai(20-10 years old), works or volunteers with children in Ojai knows how important some positive news is right now.
My youngest son and I went to the Fillmore skate park today with 25 other family and friends to watch the Ojai senior and junior high school skateboard teams (they represent Nordhoff, Chaparral and Ojai Valley School) compete in the National High School Skateboard Association contest today against 20 teams from all over California. The second of three contests and Ojai won: Ojai Senior Team first place, Ojai Junior team third place and Best Trick to J.T. Erickson.
These 11 boys represented Ojai so well, they skated with soul and skill like no others. Please give them your good wishes when you see them in town or drive by our really sad skatepark we currently have in town. They just skated so well! We are all so proud of them.
Thanks and please come watch your Ojai skate teams at Skate Lab in Simi Valley for the last contest!
GO OJAI!
check out www.ojaiskatepark.com for the latest updates.
Comment #2 Posted by: sunday | May 9, 2009 09:33 PM
Here's a photo of JT doing his thing at the Ojai Skate Park back in April of 2008. Congrats!!
Comment #3 Posted by: Didj | May 10, 2009 12:01 PM