This past winter skaters and bmx’ers attended public input meetings to lobby for public skatepark funds to be included in the next city bond. Having already convinced Travis County commissioners and voters to allocate $500,000 in last year’s county bond election, the momentum was in force for the city bond lobbying campaign. This vocal crowd showed up with such force at each of the input meetings, that city staffers asked leaders of the Austin Public Skatepark Action Committee to limit their speakers to just a few advocates. Frequently, people who were attending the meetings in support of other issues like the downtown public library would dedicate a portion of their speeches to supporting the skatepark campaign.

During the course of the process to determine what dollar amounts would be included in the bond, the committee was told by the City Council that they would need to reduce the total bond amount by hundreds of millions of dollars. Instead of the $2.1 million requested by skaters to build multiple skateparks throughout the city, funding was set at $650,000 to build one skatepark and $620,000 for one BMX park. These are still generous amounts, but frustrating when compared to figures like $2 million to provide golf course putting green maintenance– a cause which brought zero golf advocates to the input meetings. Likewise, traffic "calming" structures enjoyed hundreds of thousands of bond dollars even though nobody was asking for them.

But the greatest insult to the strong grassroots skatepark campaigners came when the City Council decided to re-jigger the numbers to provide tens of millions of dollars to last-minute requests from local arts organizations such as the Mexic-Arte and Zach Scott Theater- groups that are already far better positioned to receive this money from local philanthropists than skateboarders. People who understand the process far better than I have explained that although their representation was absent at the public input meetings, these groups benefited from close connections to members of the City Council.

Voters are given several choices on what their tax dollars should support in this bond package. The projects have been separated into 7 Propositions on this November’s ballot. Early voting is underway, which allows Austin residents to vote at any polling station rather than having to go to their own precinct polling station on voting day. The skate and BMX parks fall under PROPOSITION 3 along with money for refurbishing other Parks and Recreation facilities.

Hondo Public Skatepark Progress