City Commission hears proposal for skateboard park

Numerous teenagers carried their skateboards out of the city commission meeting room at Tuesday's commission meeting. It's an unusual sight to see young people with skateboards showing up at a commission meeting. But at this meeting, they assembled in an effort to show their support for a new skate park in Fort Scott.

Resident Brad Duvall spoke to commissioners about building a new skate park. He and his group wanted to gauge the interest of commissioners, who responded positively to the idea.

Currently, there are no set plans or even a guarantee that the park will be constructed. Right now, it's in the discussion phase.

Duvall said there's "a lot of skateboarding in town" among young people who use parking lots of facilities for skateboarding. Many times, neighbors report the skateboarder to the Fort Scott Police, who tell the kids to refrain from their activity in those locations.

Duvall said the park, ideally, would be similar to the one in Nevada, Mo. The Nevada Skate Park, located inside Walton Park, has multiple ramps used by bicyclists and skateboarders to display their aerial moves.

A group of young people in Nevada helped make the park a reality and the facility has been successful, according to an article in the Nevada Daily Mail.

Mayor Dick Hedges advised the supporters to perhaps come up with cost estimates and designs for the park.

The supporters will be working to further the plan with members of the youth activities group, which is part of the ongoing Fort Scott Community Visioning project. Also, the Ministerial Alliance is supporting the project.

In other items discussed at the meeting, commissioners did the following:

* Heard a request by resident Henry Yount who asked if the city's vicious dogs ordinance listing a bull terrier as a vicious dog be removed from the ordinance. Bull terriers are not a vicious dog, he said. Commissioners will take the request under advisement.

* Voted on resolutions for the repair or removal of structures at 723 S. Little St., 409 S. Eddy St., 202 S. Eddy St., and 401 Barteau St. The owners have 90 days to show the city they're making an effort to repair or are in the process of repairing or the city will take further action to remove the structure.

* Approved an application submitted by Judy and John Renard to make repairs to the front facade and back wall of their building at 12 N. Main St. The grant gives the Renards $500 toward the project that is estimated to cost $3,800. The program is called the Fort Scott Downtown Facade Improvement Grant program that gives a maximum of $500 for building owners who are fixing up the exterior of their buildings.

* Heard Interim City Manager Bob Farmer's report that he and Finance Director Susan Brown City are working on getting a plan in place to raise salaries of city workers to get caught up with workers salaries of other Kansas cities. Right now, the salaries of Fort Scott city employees have fallen behind the average of other cities of similar size.

* Commissioners conducted two executive sessions back to back following the meeting. Commissioner Jim Adams made a motion asking for an executive session to be held only for commissioners to discuss non-elected personnel. The other session was with Farmer to discuss non-elected personnel. The meetings were held to discuss the hiring of a city manager.