LA PALMA : City to Consider Skateboarding Ban

The City Council decided this week to consider banning skateboarding and roller-skating in some commercial areas.

After receiving a complaint from the owner of a large commercial and retail center, council members unanimously agreed Tuesday to consider a law outlawing skaters in areas where property owners post signs. The proposed law will go before the council Sept. 3.

If the council adopts the law, skateboarding or roller-skating in posted areas would be a misdemeanor, City Manager Pamela Gibson said.

“We’ve been down this road before,” Councilman Richard T. Polis said. “We realize what the problem is.”

Three years ago, the council adopted a law prohibiting skateboarding around City Hall and the Central Park community center area across the street. Skateboarders had found the area an attractive place to ride but also damaged picnic tables in the process of performing tricks, Polis said.

The proposed law would not outlaw skateboarding throughout the city, only in areas where commercial centers have had a problem and agree to place signs prohibiting the practice, Gibson said.

A law is needed because skateboarders are damaging the 42-acre Centerpointe La Palma plaza, property manager Julie Olin said. Skateboarders have torn up concrete parking stall dividers, chipped corners from buildings and paint from benches, she said. Skateboarders also race down the ramps of the plaza’s parking structure, she said.

Olin said banning skateboarding at the plaza is an unfortunate solution since the participants don’t seem to have many safe places to practice their tricks. But the building owners have become concerned over the mounting property damage and potential liability should someone be injured, she said.