The hoops at River Bend Park went up on Oct. 19, following a vote by the City Council on Monday, Oct. 16.
While the council was in agreement on putting the hoops back up heading into the meeting, the biggest decision was when they should be put back up. “I think people are ready and waiting,” Mayor Janet Williams said.
In addition, the City Council also approved eight additional recommendations for improvements to the park, which is expected to cost at least $75,000, according to Public Works/Parks Director Greg Boatman.
The hoops were removed in May at the recommendation of Police Chief Rodney Seurer and with the approval of City Administrator Brad Larson in the wake of two shootings within six weeks, which police alleged at least originated at the park and injured two boys.
The move to take down the hoops, a strategy used by the city in the past after disruptions at the park, sparked a divide in the community about whether the hoops should ever go back up.
The city conducted three engagement sessions with stakeholders of the park over the summer, collecting feedback and recommendations from the Parks and Recreation and Natural Resources Commission, which recommended the hoops to be returned, among other improvements.
According to a document obtained by Southwest News Media through a standard public data request, the city spent about $3,600 on “hard costs,” including items like supplies for the engagement sessions, and used about 317 hours of staff time on the sessions, including organizing them from May 22 through July 11.
Williams called the set up of the engagement forums effective. “It’s been a long process. I do believe we made a good faith effort to reach out to the community and we’ve heard from them,” she said.
Council member Christine Kelly said she thought it was important during the work session to hear from the police department, which expressed its support for the hoops going back up.
Councilor Bob Coughlen, after reflecting on the work session and reading the minutes from the meeting, said the improvements being made to River Bend Park are ones all neighborhoods would like to see, like lighting and fencing.
“We could’ve [taken] all of these actions and I could have put down my park in my neighborhood. Any one of our neighborhood parks we could’ve just changed the title on the top and said, ‘Yeah, we’d like better lighting, we’d like all these things, too,’” he said.
Coughlen said the issue was [that] bad players did bad things in the park,” and instead “the park itself was not the issue. It was a pretty good park to begin with, but we have these other things to help make it better.”
Through a city spokesperson, Emily Gunderson, Coughlen said that by “bad players” he meant “bad people who made bad decisions” — not basketball players who have used the outdoor court.
Coughlen, during his comments at the Oct. 16 City Council meeting, said, “Part of this is how do we not let this happen again? We don’t want these activities in our neighborhood and part of that is going to be community engagement, and part of my challenge is to the whole community to be part of the solution to this.”
“We need the community involvement to work with the players, the youth, that caused some of these problems and try to be peer-pressured to not have these problems anymore,” he said.
Gunderson could not confirm the age of the suspects, saying the investigation is “ongoing.”
Council member Stacy Crakes asked Boatman if there was any consideration at looking at moving the basketball courts to a different location within the park, which was offered as a potential solution throughout the process.
Boatman said the Parks and Recreation Department, along with the Police Department, constantly looks at potential security concerns and solutions at its 23 parks and particularly considers standards known as “Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design.”
With those standards in mind Boatman and others have been part of making design changes to parks in Savage. However, he said where the hoops in River Bend Park are located is ideal since police have a clear line of sight into the park.
Boatman, in an Oct. 18 phone call, said additional lighting would likely not be installed until the spring, saying a number of different factors need to be considered, including the amount of lighting that could be installed.
He said the administration is in the process of securing quotes for the fencing and that depending on navigating a number of factors including zoning, the fencing around the court could be installed this fall.
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