Letter to the Park Board

If you read my entry about Stephanie’s party, you saw that we got canceled out of Ice Skating.

I sent an email to several members of the park board:

To: mschmidt@minneapolisparks.org, tnordstrom@minneapolisparks.org,
mmerrillanderson@minneapolisparks.org, ayoung@minneapolisparks.org,
tnordyke@minneapolisparks.org
Subject: Parade Ice Gardens Complaint

I would like to lodge a complaint about the operations of the Parade Ice
Gardens.

On Saturday, March 25th, my wife called the information line for Parade Ice
Gardens and was told that there would be open skating on April 1st from
2:30 to 4:00.

We then planned my daughter’s 13th birthday party with the intention to go
skating at Parade.

We had all the parents drop their kids at Parade at 2:15. We stood around
waiting for the rink to open.

Finally around 2:40, an employee informed us that open skate had been
canceled because The Wild hockey team was going to be using it at 3:00.

He stated that there had been a message on the information line for a few
days and there had been notes on the bulletin board.

As you might imagine, my daughter was very dissapointed.

There was a woman in line in front of me who was very annoyed and I got the
impression that the cancellation of public open skate with little notice
happens quite often.

I think this is unacceptable.

I don’t think that I should have to call the information line every day
before I plan on going skating to see if public skating has been canceled.

I also don’t think it’s reasonable that I should have to change my
daughter’s birthday plans at the last moment due to the whims of a
professional hockey team.

Parade Ice Gardens is a Minneapols Park and Recreation facility. It is
supposed to be for public use. Not for the use of a professional hockey
team when ever they feel like it.

If you are going to publish a schedule that states there will be public
open skate on Saturdays from 2:30 to 4:00 I don’t think it’s unreasonable
to expect that to happen.

I would have to assume that The Wild have a practice schedule that could be
merged into the park schedule at the very least.

If my wife had called on March 25th and been told that there was no public
skating on April 1st, that would have been fine. We would have made other
plans.

But to tell us that there would be public skating and then change it,
that’s unacceptable.

I got an almost immediate reply from one member:

Mr. Foreman-

Thank you for letting me know your concerns about the Ice Gardens. You are quite right that if public open skate is advertised for Saturdays from 2:30 to 4:00 it is not unreasonable to expect that to happen.

I apologize, and I sincerely hope your daughter’s birthday was not ruined.

I will ask Mr. Schmidt to find out what went wrong and why you were subjected to this last minute change. I agree that this is not acceptable and should never happen again.

Thank you again, and please feel free to contact me in the future if this is not resolved to your satisfaction.

Tom Nordyke

I guess that’s a reasonable response. I don’t know if they will change anything though. :-O