Staff recommends the City Council accept the grant to fund recreational programming at Skate Park for the summer of 2025.

The Billings Skate Park Committee is a group organized to promote improvements to Skate Park and increase activity at the park. This group has funded a new design for the Eastern side of Skate Park along with other improvements like lights. They have organized events and training sessions for local skaters to help encourage more people to utilize the park and increase positive activities there. The Skate Park Committee has been actively raising funding to make improvements along with applying for grants when available.

The Billings Skate Park Committee applied for a grant from NRPA and Musco to install lights at Skate Park. Included in the application was funding to provide recreational activities at the location. The Committee was awarded the grant and to complete the process, an MOU with the City and NRPA needs to be agreed to and signed by the City. Recreation Division staff will facilitate the recreational activities for the summer of 2025 utilizing the grant funding to cover all expenses.

The lights and programming are important to the overall plan to improve safety in parks by applying CPTED principles and increasing positive activities in the park. The Skate Park has been a problem with negative activities and vandalism. Adding both lights and increased participation the negative activities will decrease. The lights will assist the Police Department by making the park more visible and easier to patrol. 

The stakeholders for this grant are the Skate Park Committee, users of the park and the City of Billings.

City Council may:

• Accept the grant and sign the MOU,
• Not Approve

The grant is funding recreational programming at Skate Park which will be 100% covered by the grant. 

This grant is an opportunity to increase positive activity at Skate Park and introduce more people to the joys of skating.