Wasillas skate park needs caring

Consider it a lesson in responsibility.

When Wasilla was considering building a skate park for local youngsters, many said it would never work that youths would gather there to make mischief, smoke cigarettes, drink beer, play loud music, get in fights, scrawl graffiti, and maybe even buy and sell drugs. Sure enough, some of that is happening. Even though local merchants are glad to have the skateboard problem mostly consolidated at a single location, its not yet certain the park can be called a success.

Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon reports that about half the park users are not local residents, that youngsters seen there during the school day almost without exception claim to be home schoolers, and that skaters, children and young adult, are continuing to use the park even after its too dark to do so safely.

Mayor Sarah Palin has pointed out that the local skateboard association promised to do its share to police and maintain the park, discouraging users from spray-painting or putting stickers on the surface that make it more dangerous for their fellow skaters.

Some city council members already have expressed impatience with the problems, and there is some sentiment for the city not to maintain the park, or even to close the park altogether. User fees, a fence and a full-time monitor for the park are other possibilities.

Wasilla residents should realize that along with the privilege of getting this facility comes the responsibility for taking care of it, and for not creating a nuisance at what was to be a fun place for young skaters and skateboarders.

While we agree that skateboarding is not a crime, users and abusers of this new facility should bear in mind that the patience of many with this problem is wearing thin.

Strangely conservative?

This election has us witnessing a strange marriage between those who hold up individual rights as supreme and those who would amend the constitution to set limits on one of lifes most personal decisions.

No matter how you feel about human sexuality or family values, we have trouble understanding why the many candidates in this election trumpeting themselves as bedrock, dyed-in-the-wool Alaskan conservatives, who want to shrink government and reduce its influence in business and personal lives, are at the same time so vehemently supporting Ballot Measure No. 2.

The conservative candidates who embrace the passage of the one man, one woman marriage ballot measure are taking a position that seems profoundly incompatible with the political stance they simultaneously claim to embody.

True conservatives might better fight against any government measures that stray outside stewardship of the states finances and resources rather than wandering off instead to regulate morality, religious beliefs and, especially, marriage the most private of all human activities.

We are not taking a position on the ballot measure itself that is now up to the voters to decide. We only wonder why a genuinely conservative candidate or lawmaker would even consider proposing (or endorsing) such a measure in the first place.

And we would like Alaskans to carefully consider for whom and for what they are voting, rather than taking advertisements and conservative or liberal labels at face value. All the decisions we make in the voting booth are critical to the future of our state.

- Frontiersman