Future of skatepark monitor uncertain
Kids who frequent the Hermosa Beach skate park have for years enjoyed a little more supervision than they find at other skating facilities in the region, but the future of monitors at the park is now up in the air.
Earlier this month, the city’s Parks, Recreation, and Community Advisory Board considered whether to continue the monitoring program. The issue created a host of new questions for commissioners, including those surrounding liability and usage rates, and they asked staff to return later this year with more information.
The monitoring quandary emerged in April, when the City Council took up a more colorful issue: allowing scooters in the skatepark. The council, reacting to the growing popularity of scooters among city youth, decided to launch a pilot program to allow scooters in the skatepark. (The council is scheduled to formally change the city’s municipal code to include scooters in the list of permitted vehicles in the park later this month.) But the unanimous vote on opening the park to scooters brought up a trickier question about legal liability.
According to City Attorney Michael Jenkins, state law gives cities two ways to obtain immunity from lawsuits generated by people who injure themselves at skateparks. One is to staff the park with a monitor to assure that kids are wearing safety equipment. The other is to have an ordinance requiring pads and helmets by park users and to post that ordinance in the park. Jenkins said that Hermosa did both, and the ordinance had to be changed in order for scooters to be included.
Jenkins said the decision to rely on both an ordinance and a staff monitor dates back to the park’s opening in 1999.
“We passed the ordinance to cover ourselves in the event that at any point city decided not to have a monitor,” he said at the April council meeting.
Hermosa remains the only city in the region to deploy a monitor at its park. At the April meeting,
Community Resources Manager Kelly Orta said in surveying other cities, it was not clear why they did not have monitors but speculated that it was because of lack of resources.
Having a monitor creates several logistical challenges for Hermosa. The monitor is technically responsible for ensuring that all park users have a waiver for every day the park is used. But for those under 18, the waiver must be filled out by a parent or guardian, making it harder for teenagers to go to the park by themselves. Commissioners said that attendance at the park had been dropping as a result, especially as other unsupervised parks, like Manhattan Beach’s, open up.
Nonetheless, Hermosa staff had concerns about removing the monitor, citing issues that emerged during a trial period in 2013 when the park was unsupervised for roughly four months. During that time, according to city staff, the Police Department got 37 calls about problematic behavior at the skatepark, including trespassing when the park was closed, and “unsafe” use when it was open. Staff also said that older skaters disregarded etiquette and rules about pads and helmets, causing younger park patrons to feel unsafe.
Some commissioners, however, thought that the money could be better spent elsewhere, especially given what Commissioner Jessica Guheen described as an increase in litter and graffiti at South Park. Compensation for skate park monitors is estimated to total about $26,000 per year.
“That money and that staff person’s time is a resource,” Guheen said. “Are we making the best use of it? I don’t think we are.”