DANA POINT : Council to Discuss Skateboard Measure

Skateboarders, roller-skaters and bicyclists could be banned from certain parts of the city under a proposed city law that will be discussed by the City Council tonight.

The measure includes fines of $25 for a first offense and $50 for a second offense.

Problems with skateboarders at several shopping centers and public parks throughout the city prompted the proposal, Mayor Bill Bamattre said.

“The question came up when certain business people approached the council regarding their ability to control skateboarders in their parking lots,” Bamattre said. “Right now, without an ordinance like this, we can’t enforce a skateboarding ban.”

The law would be welcomed among tenants at Ocean Ranch Village, a year-old shopping center at Street of the Golden Lantern and Camino del Avion, said Gary Liss, manager of Longs Drug Store. Skateboarders have been a hazard to customers, even causing one woman to nearly drop a child, Liss said.

“She was irate,” he said. “But that is only one of many complaints about it.

“We would call the Sheriff’s Department, but the deputies said they couldn’t really do anything without some sort of ordinance,” Liss said.

The law would “put some teeth into the rules,” he said.

At La Plaza Park, just off Coast Highway, skateboarders have been destroying park benches and steps in a small public amphitheater, said David Lewis, administrator for the Capistrano Bay Park and Recreation District.

“We have two concerns--safety and damage to some of the areas,” Lewis said. “We have had people run over, hit or just scared by kids going by at high rates of speed. We also have kids taking some sizable chunks out of the concrete. Those concrete chips require a lot of patchwork.”

It would be up to the city engineer to recommend public areas of the city that would be subject to the ban. The law also stipulates that in private areas such as shopping centers, a petition signed by tenants would have to be submitted to the city before a ban would be considered.

Signs would have to be posted in all areas of the city where the ban is in place, the measure stipulates.