Elkins Council takes new look at skateboarding
ELKINS — Elkins City Council has unanimously approved the first reading of ordinances that would reduce “borderline illegal” restrictions on skating in the city.
Recommended by the Elkins Rules and Ordinances Committee, the new ordinance would allow people to use skateboards, roller skates, rollerblades, motorized scooters and similar devices within Elkins city limits so long as it is conducted in a “prudent and careful manner,” according to a memo from the committee.
The new ordinance would sizably cut the original ordinance, Section 71.46, from six sections to just one that states, “No person shall ride or propel skateboards, in-line skates or roller skates except in a prudent and careful manner, with reasonable regard for the safety of the operator, other persons and the property of other persons.”
In the original ordinance that banned skating in city limits, offenders’ skateboards, roller skates and other similar devices would be seized by police and only returned after conviction, acquittal or payment of a fee. During the Jan. 9 City Council meeting, Elkins Police Chief Travis Bennett said the original ordinance is “unenforceable,” “archaic” and, regarding some items in the ordinance, “borderline illegal.”
“…Seizing a skateboard if you see a person on a skateboard, to me that would be no different than saying ‘I’m going to seize your car if I catch you speeding’,” Bennett explained to council. “It’s kind of one of our rights, and we can’t just go and take people’s stuff.”
Bennett stated that he’d spoken with residents who had concerns about skating, but said he found most of their concerns to fall under the issue of trespassing more than the action of skating itself.
“In my eyes, those are all things we can enforce under a separate law, such as destruction of property or trespassing,” Bennett said.
He also acknowledged the concerns of those who had witnessed people skating in places such as bank parking lots; however, Bennett reminded council that those places are private property and because of that, if an officer saw someone skating on private property, they “could not do a thing about it” without a complaint from the property owner.
“That would be no different than us coming into your backyard because somebody was skateboarding in it and telling them to stop,” Bennett said. “Without a complaint from that property owner to initiate that, we can’t just go onto private property and enforce an ordinance like that.”
This change to the original ordinance comes after the Elkins Parks & Recreation Commission unanimously voted in November to move forward with the removal of the Elkins Skatepark from Glendale Park.
The Elkins Skatepark, built in 2009, is set to be relocated to property owned by the Refinery Church, who will take ownership of the skatepark from the EPRC, near North Elementary School and Highland Park.
The decision faced scrutiny from the community, with many from the Save the Park committee speaking out against the removal during EPRC meetings. A petition on Change.org called “Save the Elkins Skatepark” has received around 1,892 signatures, as of publication.
According to an email sent in September to The Inter-Mountain by Alice Sabitino, an initial leader of the skatepark project, before the park was built, skating throughout the city often resulted in multiple citations, and the confiscation of the skateboards, and eventually created an adversarial relationship between skaters and law enforcement and city businesses.
Elkins City Clerk Sutton Stokes explained to council on Jan. 9 that the change to the ordinance came after officials received a social media comment from David Helmick asking, “So is it still illegal for me to skate in Elkins? Since the skatepark is gonna be gone? Am I still going to get a 100 some dollar fine and my skateboard taken? Or do I have to learn how to play ‘pickleball’?”
“This led the communication specialist to then look into…he was curious,” Stokes told council. “Basically, he discovered how many different places it was mentioned and how really confusing and, ultimately, unenforceable it looked and that is what got the conversation into (the Rules and Ordinances Committee).”
The first reading also included changes to sidewalk ordinances, such as Section 93.004, which would allow people to wheel bicycles on sidewalks in the city, and the full removal of Section 93.005, which reiterated the rule against skating, specifically on sidewalks.
When Fourth Ward Council Member Nanci Bross-Fregonara questioned allowing skateboarding on city sidewalks and not cycling, Stokes explained that, most everywhere, skaters are considered pedestrians while bicyclists are considered vehicles. Bennett added that the new ordinance wouldn’t be able to encompass “every little thing” and that they would have to use discretion.