Skateboarders in Seattle have reason to celebrate, despite a recent setback at the proposed Lower Woodland skate park. Last Tuesday, February 21, the Seattle City Council unanimously approved a resolution creating a task force charged with developing a plan for how to make Seattle a skate-friendly community. The task force will propose how and where skateboard facilities should be built around the city.

The resolution, introduced by the city council's parks committee chairman, David Della, authorizes creation of a group made up of volunteers and city employees. The group will then develop a proposal for a comprehensive skate park strategy and present it to the Board of Parks Commissioners, probably some time in December. After that, the mayor, parks' superintendent and possibly the city council will make a decision on the proposal, before proceeding with design or construction work.

The budget for the task force is $100,000 and some of that will go to hiring a consultant responsible for developing a public input plan. The Parks Department has been criticized for its public input process, most recently at the potential skate park site in Lower Woodland Park. After vociferous complaints from neighbors about a lack of input, the Board of Parks Commissioners rejected a staff proposal for an alternate site for the skate park, nearer to neighbors' homes. A task force consultant specifically working on a public outreach plan might preempt some of those problems.

"The hope is to have someone with public outreach expertise," said Tatsuo Nakata, Della's chief of staff.

"One of the things we've seen [with skateboarding projects] is conflict through the neighborhoods," Nakata said, though he noted that this was partly a negative perception of skateboarding.

The parks department is also placing an emphasis on the public input process for the task force. Their representative, Susanne Friedman, a parks planner and ten year veteran of the department, has extensive experience in public outreach, as well as being a trained landscape architect.

"This [taskforce] is a strategic plan - looking at the types of facilities that are in demand, and how to meet that and where...and make sure there is a thorough public process," Friedman said.

The resolution calls for the task force to be made up of three skateboard advocates, a landscape architect, representatives from the parks staff and department of transportation, as well as five at-large members "representing a variety of community perspectives," according to the resolution language. The Mayor and council member Della ultimately approve task force members.

The resolution also specifically mentions that it will not impede other skateboarding projects in process. The main skateboarding project the city is currently working on is the Park's Department's Skateboard Park Policy. The policy, created in 2003, calls for building four skate parks in the city, roughly distributed in a quadrant pattern - Northeast, Southeast, Northwest and Southwest. These quadrant parks would be larger, fully featured areas for skate borders, in contrast to the smaller, more numerous, skate areas envisioned by the city council resolution.

One of these quadrant parks is the Lower Woodland Park project. In its initial design, the skate park is expected to be roughly 18,000 square feet in size. Skateboarding advocates had lobbied to build the project on the east side of Lower Woodland Park, near the street, but the Board of Parks Commissioners rejected the idea, saying the project should be built to the west, in an area unpopular with skaters, primarily because of suspected drainage problems the site could have.

Scott Shin, a cofounder of Parents for Skateparks, and member of the parks' Skateboarding Advisory Committee, sees Lower Woodland Park less as a defeat than as part of an evolution in the community's first tentative steps towards skateboarding.

"This is an iterative process. Lower Woodland Park was originally a reaction to the Ballard [bowl] debacle. Now we have this [city council] resolution as a reaction Lower Woodland Park," Shinn said.

Shinn said the lessons learned at Lower Woodland for the next iteration of skate park projects includes picking a range of sites, applying rigorous criteria to their selection, and being mindful of the public process.

But he also voiced concern that while passage of the city council resolution was good news for skateboarding, implementing the skate park at Lower Woodland would still be a crucial part of the ultimate success or failure of a city-wide skate park system.

"They're doing everything they can to make lemonade out of lemons in that thing. You don't want to be a choosy beggar but ... Lower Woodland is going to be a prototype for quadrant skate parks. If it doesn't work out ... it's going to be bad for the whole system."

Ultimately, that system will include a backbone of four large skate parks, enhanced by other, smaller skateboarding features, recommended by the task force.