Oviedo, Florida * -- After using city funds to build a 30,000 square-foot skateboard park, the Parks and Recreation department of Oviedo, Florida, is now charging up to $12/day for admission.

Local residents and skateboarders in Oviedo say that the vast majority of publicly owned skateparks * in the United States * are free, and Oviedo's should be too.

So, they are banding together to show support to make the Oviedo skatepark free on Monday, December 1st at 7PM at the Oviedo City Hall. A poster for the event states:

"Free the Oviedo Skatepark. Community Skate Park? So why are you charging big $$? Is that fair to the the little kid that cannot afford to skate? NO! Come show your support, Monday December 1st at 7pm at the Oviedo City Hall."

The skatepark in question is no little snakerun on the edge of a ballfield. This is a well-designed and constructed masterwork by respected longtime skatepark builder Tim Payne's company Team Pain *.

According to the Tallahassee parks and recreation website, Tim Payne has received a "Lifetime Achievement Award" for his "pioneering spirit and innovative ideas" in designing and building over 100 skate parks worldwide, including those used for the ESPN * X-Games * each year. Tim's references include Tony Hawk * and Miki Vuckovich *.

Trice Guisinger, of the Oviedo Parks and Recreation Department, said that the park cost approximately $700,000-800,000 to build, including land purchase, landscaping, and construction. About $200,000 of the cost of the park went to Team Pain for the construction of the actual skateboarding structures. The all-concrete park is about half street course and half pools.

"Basically," explained Tim, "the cities make skateboarding illegal, and then they build these parks, and they should be free. ... Our whole business (philosophy) is that when we build a city park, it should be free."

Trice Guisinger of the Oviedo Parks and Recreation department said that she understood that the skatepark fees were put in place to fund the maintanance of the skatepark, and to monitor the park to help avoid lawsuits.

But Tim feels those aren't good reasons. Budgets for park maintenance, he explained, "are already in place." In addition, "the state of Florida put skateboarding on the list of hazardous activities, so there's no way you can sue the state" for using an unmonitored skatepark. And Tim says that based on his research, monitoring of a park actually puts the city at increased liability, as the monitor can be held responsible if, for example, they fail to keep someone wearing their helmet.

Some think that the park's maintenance could be payed for with a concession on the premise instead of through fees to skaters. "They would make so much more money on concessions if the park was free", said local skater Tito Porrata. Tito also expressed that the entrance fee kept the park from being skated much. Most skaters, he explained, opt to travel to free skateparks instead.

According to Tito, other Florida cities with free skateparks include Tampa *, Deltona, Sarasota, St. Augustine, Navaree City, Collier Count-Naples, Tallahassee, North Port, Tavares, Lakeland, Gulfport, Marathon, Boca Raton, DeFuniak Springs, Denudin, and Venice.

And other communities have come up with other solutions to cover the ongoing costs of a skatepark. According to David Hormuth, who helped organize the operation of the Tallahassee skatepark, most cities in Florida with longstanding Parks and Recreation departments have "Friends of the Park" funds set up, where funds and property can be donated to the park and earmarked for particular purposes. In Tallahassee, he explained, the operation of the park is funded by donations raised at events put on by the local skateshop. The proceeds are then placed in the Friends of the Park fund specifically for the operation of the skatepark. David also explained that there wasn't much monitoring needed: "Skaters are a no-hassle kind of people".

And there's also an argument that the park should just be open and unmonitored. "There's over 1,000 other public city skateparks, and a lot of them don't even have fences," explained Tim. The poster for Monday's "Free Oviedo" event also states that "97% of the skateparks in the US are free, unfenced and unsupervised".

But the most important thing to realize, Tito told me, is that for some, having a park fee or not means the difference between being able to go to the park or not. Many local kids, he explains, have trouble finding money to pay the skatepark's daily fee.

Plus, let's not forget what we're talking about here: a city park. Points out Tim: "It's supposed to be a community thing."

Notes in support of a free Oviedo skatepark can be sent to freeskateparks@hotmail.com

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