Fourth Question for Candidate Forum; Skate Park Usage

Here is another question that I submit for inclusion in the candidates forum;

The Riverside Railyard is the most recent park built in Great Falls. It is used by many kids in Great Falls. However, there have been many public complaints about both profane graffiti and hooliganism at the park. Is this a problem, and if so, what would you do to help solve it?

Those Darned Rose Colored Glasses

Remember the survey last Summer on the pools? You know, the one in our water bill where about a solid majority of the people in Great Falls told our City Commission that neighborhood pools were worth saving. Well, whoever that was adding together the figures was certainly pulling something out of somewhere.

If you remember those surveys, our options were to spend nothing (and close down the neighborhood pools) or to spend $2.2 Million in repairs to the Jaycee, the Water Tower and the Mitchell.

Well, $2.2 Million seems to be not quite accurate. Now that we have committed to spend the money, the lowest bid is coming in at something like $2.5 Million. That’s about 14% over the estimate.

This is not the first error in estimation that the City has made in our very recent history. Not by a long shot.

If we move the decimal place over a digit or two to the right, we can recall the city’s estimates for the cost of the coal plant. You remember current cost estimate for the plant we were originally told would cost $515 Million plant is now hovering somewhere around $678 Million.

Moving back in time a few years, we can recall similar unrealistic cost estimates for the golf courses and other public works projects. Moving away from costs, there were a number of similar unrealistic revenue expectations for city ventures, most notably the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Party and the White Water Elephant.

Now, I am not alleging anything inappropriate here. I think that city planners did a study and really thought that the repairs to those pools would come in at the lower number. However, whoever was doing the math and studying the work involved made some major errors. Fourteen percent is a pretty huge variance.

Now, I am pretty sure that Great Falls taxpayers would have supported $2.5 Million to revitalize our neighborhood pools. However, we never got the chance to make a statement either way since the numbers on which most of us based our vote had only a tenuous relationship with reality.

Which leads me to the point of this particular post. Over at ECB, Geeguy has been doing a great job telling truth to power over the seeming inability of city estimators to plan for worst cast scenarios. Our recent news just highlights the point. This is a very important obligation, because these estimators are playing with our money.

I grant you that estimating public works projects is something throwing a dart at a moving target. However, it ain’t rocket science either. At the very least, the city could have put out some informational/non-binding requests for proposals; the responses to those RFPs would have given the city some important information as to the actual costs involved.

How About a Mural?

First, let me be clear. I am not off hiatus. When I have the urge to blog, I will be posting more regularly.

However, I am taking a break in my hiatus to make a proposal for our local concussion generator (the Skate Park). As any recent visitor knows, the graffiti there has gotten much worse. Some of it is offensive, obscene and racist.

My six year old son has decided that he wants to learn to skate, especially now that ski season is over. Therefore, I am spending much more time there. To be honest, a great deal of that graffiti raises questions I don't really want my son asking yet. One of which is whether it is OK to "color" on city property.

It appears that our city commission has decided that it isn't worth their time to police the graffiti regs at the skate park. To be honest, I can understand their reasoning. However, there has to be a middle ground.

We are an extremely artistic community. Why don't we make the entire skate park into not just a place for kids to congregate, but also into urban art?

The city should invite local artists to cover every last inch of concrete with art. It could even be made into an event (with a juried competition). Whaddya think?

Skate Park Covered with Graffiti

On this blustery day after Thanksgiving, I took a long bike ride instead of fighting shoppers. I know, I know, I am not doing much to help our consumer driven economy. However, I had much turkey that needed to be worked off.

During the workout, I rode by our municipal concussion generator. I was surprised to see that most of the park is covered with graffiti. Examples of all this spray-paint artistry are displayed on this post.

Now, the city is very quick to notify property owners that they only have 72 hours to remove graffiti on their property. If not, the city will remove it for the property owner at $200 per hour.

These paintings look like they have been up for a lot longer than three days. I would guess that the pumpkin display above has been up since before Halloween. Other paintings have been up for so long that they are beginning to fade.

I am assuming that the city just doesn't know about it; otherwise they would be following their own regulations, right? Right. And if you believe that, come see me about some beachfront property in Kansas. Unfortunately, the city is damned either way here. Either they are not following their own regs or they are not paying attention to their own facilities.

The city needs to clean up this mess.