Young Beaconsfielder pushes council for rink service

BY ELYSE AMEND

elyse.amend@transcontinental.ca

Beaconsfield resident Alex Banks started thinking about ice skating and hockey early this year. Since August, the 12-year-old has been regularly addressing council at their monthly public meetings, asking them to restore full maintenance service to his neighbourhood skating rink at Highridge Park.

Last winter, the City of Beaconsfield instituted the Adopt-a-Rink program at three of its smaller outdoor skating rinks: Jasper, Brookside and Highridge Parks. Residents in the neighbourhoods around these parks were supposed to ‘adopt’ the skating rinks by opening and maintaining them with tools and training provided by the city’s public works department.

“What happened was, one person ended up doing all the work,” Alex explained, adding that many people in the neighbourhood do not have enough time to work on the rink because of their jobs.

“A lot of parents work. Both parents work,” said Alex’s mother Marie-Anne Selbach. She added her husband also travels regularly for his job and just does not have enough time to maintain the rink, especially when it comes to flooding the surface. “Flooding is very difficult. It’s an art […] I think it might come across that we’re elitist and don’t want to get our hands dirty. But that’s not the case.”

On top of attending the council meetings, Alex has also been e-mailing back and forth with council members. In September, he presented a petition signed by just over 100 parents of children who use the rink at Highridge, asking the city to resume maintenance.

However, city councillor Karen Messier said the Adopt-a-Rink program was actually instituted so the rinks could get better service.

“In winter 2005-2006, they were serviced by the city. I was getting phone calls saying, we want to get on our rink and we’re waiting for the city truck. We’re waiting for the crew to come flood the rink. We can’t get on it and we’re frustrated,” Messier said, adding the city has to prioritize their public works operations. First, they clear roads and sidewalks, because of safety issues. Second, they maintain the larger community rinks, where there is more traffic, and pay special attention to the quality of the ice. And third, they move on the smaller neighbourhood rinks.

“We have a level of priority. Highridge is one of three rinks that I call neighbourhood rinks. They’re on smaller streets and they always ended up at the bottom of the line,” Messier said. “With Adopt-a-Rink, they (the neighbourhood) have control over their ice. They have control over how soon the families can get on the ice.”

Alex and his mother do not agree.

“It’s a real shame. A lot of the kids use it. It’s quite a busy neighbourhood and I think council underestimates the importance of the rink,” Selbach said. “We read it in the paper. Our kids are fat. They don’t do any physical activity. And here are a bunch of kids who want to use it.”

At Beaconsfield’s public consultation on the preliminary budget earlier this month, Selbach asked council to consider spending less money on the city newsletter, Contact – which Beaconsfield’s 2007-2010 strategic plan stated only 17 per cent of residents read – and use it on rink maintenance.

According to Mayor Bob Benedetti, however, while ice rinks may seem like a small expense, maintaining them is much more complex.

“We’re at the point where the ‘extra’ would cost us hiring another blue collar worker,” Benedetti said, adding the most difficult step in ice rink maintenance is actually opening it. “I think, if we could get it started for them, they could manage.”

According to Messier, that is exactly what is going to happen this season: the Adopt-a-Rink program will continue, but the city will open the neighbourhood rinks at the beginning of the season. Public works will continue to clear snow on the rinks when there is more than seven centimetres of snowfall, but it will still be lower priority. Messier also said she hopes to work out some way to get more people involved in maintenance process.

“I’m going to make a big effort to talk to them and see if we can get some type of schedule worked out,” she said. “And if they need help shoveling the rink from time to time, they can call me and I’ll go over there and shovel with them. I think we could really do a good job. I think we can make this work, but they have to be reasonable.”

From the answers he has gotten so far, Alex said he does not see full city maintenance returning to Highridge any time soon.

“I’d like to keep going, but I don’t know what I can do at this point,” he said. “I stepped up, and I tried to do my best.”