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MPRB Candidate Questionnaire
Meg Forney
Q1
Describe your personal experience with skateboarding. Have you ever been a skateboarder? Do you personally know any skateboarders? What is your general perception of the activity?
Our kids and grandkids skate board
Q2
MPRB currently has 1 skatepark in each of the 6 MPRB districts. Each MPRB skatepark is over 11 years old and is in need of replacement due to poor design and materials. MPRB has invested $0 into skateparks and skateboard infrastructure in the past decade. Over the past 4 years skateboard supporters and City of Skate have worked to have 10 new skateparks designated into MPRB master plans. We hope to have a citywide total of 20 skateparks and skate-spaces, once all masterplanning is complete in 2020. As of today, MPRB has not funded nor prioritized any one of these designated new skateparks. How will you prioritize and work to fund skateparks?
All capital investments in our neighborhood parks will be funded via our Neighborhood Park Plan for 20 years (NPP20) Equity Criteria. As a park rises on the matrix, all aspects of the park will be rehabbed. Evaluating and ranking neighborhood parks’ maintenance, MPRB will use data-driven equity matrix to enable transparent decision making. Historically underserved, economically and racially diverse areas have not received priority. NPP20 Equity Criteria
• Racially concentrated areas of poverty
• Population density
• Youth population
• Neighborhood safety
• Park assets: conditions and age
• Ratio: past 15-year park investments to replacement cost of major park assets
Q3
In 2017 and 2018 Minneapolis is hosting the world’s largest skateboard competition, X Games. During X Games Minneapolis, women and men will compete in skateboarding contests that will also be added to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Skateboarding is seen by many as a worldwide equity activity that has little barrier to participation. Do you see a connection between skateboarding and social, racial, gender, and economic equity? If so, please share a few thoughts.
Universal access to all recreation and nature engagement promotes social, racial, gender, and economic equity.
Q4
Skateboarding has always had an appeal to teenagers and kids, but after many decades, skateboarding is now a multigenerational activity that maintains a user group that varies in ages from approximately 4 to 60+ years old. MPRB needs more opportunities for our citizens to be active and creative. Along with skateboarding, what investments and activities can MPRB embrace to make our communities more active and interactive?
The MPRB’s request is addressing, through community engagement, the needs of Minneapolis’s stakeholders. Through a collaborative process, Rec Quest will assess community recreation needs for recreation center programming and facilities by compiling, creating, analyzing, and illustrating city-wide recreation center facility (size, amenities, etc.), use, and program data.
Q5
With little to no maintenance needed, quality concrete skateparks are an efficient use of tax payer resources. Other park amenities like ballfields, pools, ice rinks, and courts need large dedicated spaces and are often expensive to maintain financially and environmentally. Additionally, during the last decade, MPRB has spent more money trying to stop skateboarding via defensive architecture (skate-stoppers) than it has on skateboard parks and/or features. With collaboration during design and build processes, would you support skateboarding via the activation of everyday park features such as benches, stairs, railings, ledges and sculptures for skateboarding?
Through the RecQuest process will examine the park feature needs.
Q6
To be able to practice and challenge their skills, skateboarders have always sought underutilized public spaces like deserted plazas, schoolyards, tennis courts, and parking lots. Often skate culture has brought a “Do It Yourself” (D.I.Y.) creativity to spaces, creating their own skate features and spaces. Would you be willing to work with the skate community to sanction spaces for skateboarders to create their own D.I.Y. spaces?
In conjunction with MPRB’s RecQuest process.