hard news story

The city of Apple Valley closed the ice rinks for the season this past weekend, leaving people upset and unsure of their reasoning for the premature closing of the rinks.

The City of Apple Valley has its own way to close rinks every year. They pick a date that usually ends up around the middle of February. The people that use these rinks do not like the way they currently are doing this and believe there is a better way, because the weather is still cold in the month of February and is still usually cold enough through much of March. DJ, a student at the adjacent Eastview High School thinks the closing time should be based on attendance. “I think they should go by attendance. If people are still willing to go play hockey, the rinks should stay open as long as possible. The skating season is short enough as is. They could probably even open the rinks up earlier as well.” The rink attendants do keep track of the amount of people who show up every day, but the city does not use that data in their closing decision. Mark Brennan along with most of the other people that use the rinks, think the rinks should be open until the ice is physically too soft to skate on so they have the most possible time to skate during the long boring winter in Minnesota.

Varun Tarapore works for the city as a rink attendant. He says the way the city determines when to close, is by how much money the city has in its budget to pay for operating expenses. He also added that he does not mind it closing either “I get sick of it since I have to work almost every day once the college kids leave after winter break, and besides I have already gotten enough ice time in for the season.” When asked how the city could generate money for the rink budget DJ said, “The city has money, it’s our taxes. Where are those going?”Good question. Mark Brennan another student at Eastview mentioned the rinks could try to gather donations to stay open longer from the people that use the rinks or if a company would like to sponsor a rink in order to keep it operating. The problem with this method would be that they may not make enough money to make a difference. Considering that most of the people that use community ice rinks are kids, that is probably a good assumption that they won’t make enough money. Varun believes the only way the city would be able to keep the rinks open longer would be to exit the bad recession we are in. There is simply not enough money in the budget to keep everything that is a part of the city running and pay for the expenses such as rink attendant’s wages, water for resurfacing, and electricity for the lights for playing at night.

There is a problem with how the city shuts the rinks down, but how will it be solved? If the city cannot afford to keep them open there may be no chance to change how it is done. The city probably does not think of its community ice rinks as a major problem they have to deal and it’s like to be very low on their priority list on what to change. Either way there will be people that are unsatisfied. Whether it is unhappy pond hockey players that want to play on well groomed ice, or it will be the workers that consist of mostly high school and college kids that will be upset because they will have to work more often and have lees free time.