By james art In the winter, Westmoreland resident Dave Blouin and other volunteers build an ice rink at the Near West Side neighborhood park.
Again and again they cover a piece of land with water dozens of times to strengthen the ice that their neighbors will enjoy during the winter season. On Wisconsin’s cold nights, volunteers clear skate debris and re-coat the ice.
For the past 16 years, Blouin and other volunteers throughout the city have done their part to maintain neighborhood ice rinks through Madison’s Adopt an Ice program.
But these rinks, a valuable source of outdoor winter recreation, are under threat.
If the city’s property tax referendum fails in the Nov. 5 election, support for the city’s 13 ice rinks is among about $6 million in cuts the city will make to balance its budget.
“It would be a nasty loss,” Blouen said. “It’s hard to argue that ice rinks are an essential city service, but it’s a quality of life issue. It’s important to have these neighborhood rinks where kids and families can go in the winter and enjoy outdoor recreation.”
But removing the ice rinks is more than just a tough fiscal decision amid a budget full of tough decisions.
Warmer winters make it increasingly difficult to keep ice rinks open and to predict how many skating days a season will have.
“Climate change is real. They’re impacting winter recreation and we need to have a plan,” Parks Superintendent Eric Knapp told the city’s Finance Committee earlier this month. “I don’t think the way we’ve been delivering ice for the last 30 years is the way it’s going to be for the next 30.”
Wisconsin State Journal reporters dug into what got us here, what’s at stake and what the referendums mean for residents.
This past winter — Wisconsin’s warmest on record — the longest a rink was open was nine days, according to Parks Division data. Five of the rinks did not open at all.
Tenney Park’s frozen lagoon was open in less than five days, on par with the previous year.
“A degree might mean more to skating than anything else,” Knepp said. “That instability, those 45-degree days in January are killing the ice in the lagoon.”
At the Westmoreland rink, last year was an unprecedented anomaly, Buen said. Over the past 15 years, the rink has been open an average of 51 days per season, he said.
“We’ve been able to stay open and have good quality ice for good pieces every season,” he said. “However, we were practically a washout last year.”
How slides work
The city estimates that closing the ice rinks will save $60,000.
If the referendum fails and the City Council decides to keep these cuts, the positions for seasonal winter employees who work on leases and rink concessions will not be filled and maintenance of the rinks will cease permanently.
The ice rink cuts are one of two cuts the Parks Department would make under the budget plan if the referendum fails. The larger share of the cost cuts — about $464,000 — came from cutting State Street maintenance costs.
The city’s system of 13 rinks spans the entire city, and different types of rinks have different maintenance needs.
For a surface rink, like the one in Westmoreland, the city clears the rink after a big snowfall.
But other rinks are much larger and cannot be maintained by volunteers alone. The Lagoon rinks, which are located at Tenney, Warner and Vilas parks, require heavy equipment such as tractor mowers to clear the ice.
Skaters at an ice rink at Vilas Park in Madison.
JOHN HART, STATE JOURNAL
“There’s still a cost and there’s still a time investment for the parks staff for these volunteer rinks,” said Chad Hughes, Parks Department operations manager. “But obviously it’s not as much as some of these larger rinks, where the amount of equipment needed to maintain those rinks is way beyond the resources of some of these volunteer groups.”
What’s next
Like many other city services and programs, the failure of the referendum poses the most immediate threat to the city’s ice rinks.
If that happens, Buen, who supports the referendum, hopes City Council members will pass a budget amendment that will find a way to save the rinks.
“The cost savings that would be realized by destroying the rinks would be minimal for such an important program,” he said.
But parks officials said a change must be made to the way the city provides ice rinks even if the referendum is successful.
The Parks Department now hopes to use data and climate forecasts to better map how it can maximize the amount of ice the city maintains given its budget and climate constraints, Knepp said.
“Can we regionalize and continue to provide and partner with people who really care about ice and are passionate about it to provide as much ice as possible for the longer term as efficiently as possible,” he said .
