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Parks maintenance staff have been pouring water several days and nights per week at neighborhood outdoor rinks, off and on, for the past several weeks in hopes of making ice rinks at South Grove, Sherman, Kaufman, and Galloway Parks.

The lack of snow, which is used to berm around the rinks, both those with boards and those without, and to create a slush base for the rink base, combined with the near-balmy (for January) weather, made it very challenging to make and keep ice.

However, the boarded hockey rinks should be usable by this weekend and open-sided rinks shouldn’t be far behind.

Also, the parks crew has blown the snow from the portion of the pond nearest the parking lot in Community Park, so this portion of the pond surface is now skateable as well.

Along with this, the fresh snow has made for some fairly good sledding conditions on Skinner’s Hill.

Portable restrooms have been ordered in for use this season at Skinner’s Hill, Kaufman Park, and Galloway Park. However, we’ll not be opening or staffing the warming houses for the sledding hill nor the skating rinks due to COVID-19 precautionary measures.

Thank you for your patience!