Local Newspaper Prints Embarrassing Bail Shots, Kids to get Disappointing Lesson in City Bureaucracy.

Hey Jake, your pictures in the paper! It’s a bad bail shot, oh snap! Photo Editor: Oooh, this is a good shot. There’s lots of action and excitement and good composition. Let’s use this one. OK. Moving on. Nothing conveys the excitement of skateboarding better than an article titled “Supervisors Rethinking Skate Park”! Who are these supervisors and what are they thinking?

From the Sentinel Online: Supervisors Rethinking Skate Park
By Jennifer Marrs, Sentinel Reporter, October 6, 2006

A small skateboard park at one of North Middleton’s parks is something Carlisle High School sophomore Sage Wagner and his other neighborhood friends say they dream of.

So his father, Jim Wagner, asked North Middleton supervisors Thursday about considering putting in a small asphalt pad for skateboarding at a township park, with possible additions later.

Supervisors, who said a skate park could be a possibility, voted unanimously to send the idea to the township’s park and recreation board for discussion.

Sage and his friends, Devon Parmelee of Wilson Middle School and Jarek Velentino and Robby Warren, sophomores at Carlisle High School, say they skateboard together every day, as soon as they come home from school.

All four young men came to the township meeting Thursday with Wagner.

“It’s just something to do,” Sage said outside of the township building Thursday.

He and his friends say it would be nice to have a safe place to skateboard away from cars.

Skateboarding daily

The Wagner family came to Carlisle last September after Hurricane Katrina destroyed their mobile home in New Orleans.

Since then, Sage has picked up new hobbies, found side jobs and made new friends. His sister, Erin Wagner, a sixth-grader at Wilson Middle School, said she often watches the guys skateboard.

“We’d go there every day after school” if there were a township skateboard park, Sage said.

“We could help them put it up, too,” Warren added.

Sage worked at the Carlisle Fairgrounds over the summer and made enough money to buy materials for a “half pipe” to skateboard on in his back yard, says Wagner. He and his friends worked together to build it.

About a dozen of the boys who enjoy skateboarding live within a quarter mile of the Wagner’s home on Reservoir Drive, Wagner says.

He hopes the township can first put a section of pavement down, about the size of a basketball court.

“Then we can go from there,” he said.

Supervisors positive

Supervisor Bob Shearer said the township looked into putting in a skateboard park “several years ago” but then decided not to after learning their “insurance company wasn’t too keen about it.”

But Shearer pointed out that Newville “recently erected” a skateboard park. “If Newville can do it, maybe it’s time to step back and refer (the idea) to the recreation board.”

Even though the skateboarders move to the side of the street when cars come buy, supervisors say it “still is a safety factor.”

“I think it would be in everybody’s interest really … to have a place for these kids to go,” Shearer said, adding “it’s a popular sport.”