Sir,
I was disappointed to read, in last week's Observer, that Clr. Evans continues to press for a skateboard park in Tenby.
It's not as if the streets are full of frustrated youngsters, skate boards under arms, forlornly looking for somewhere to board. Nor are senior residents being forced off the pavements by marauding hordes of boarders as they skate the streets (avoiding the dog muck, of course!).
In my experience, skateboard parks are synonymous with everything that Tenby is not. They form a magnet for graffiti and anti-social behaviour, and are ideal spots where the impressionable and vulnerable can be preyed upon by the less virtuous in society. They are yesterday's idea and most now lie as disused eyesores, often littered with needles, beer cans, bottles and worse.
If we must press ahead with this misguided initiative, then let's at least put the park where it can, to some degree, be monitored. To hide it away in the Salterns Car Park, joining the already antisocial mini motor biking that goes on there, seems almost an acknowledgement of its inevitable and unpalatable future.
Surely it would be far more prudent to site a park in, say, the overflow car park of the Leisure Centre, or even on Greenhill School playing fields. In both locations there would be an element of visibility, supervision, perhaps first aid and, most importantly, ownership.
Tenby is blessed with virtually no crime and, with the exception of the Saturday night binge drinkers, virtually no antisocial behaviour. Please let's keep it that way and not create a potential Mecca for everything that we don't want in our lovely, unspoilt town.
Name and
address supplied.