Westminster wins Maryland Municipal League award for skate park
Carroll County Times
The Maryland Municipal League conferences put a positive spotlight on the county from time to time.
This year, the City of Westminster was given the MML Award for Excellence for a skate park project. The award was judged on innovation and environmental friendliness. The Award for Excellence recognizes outstanding projects in local government, usually picking one or two around the state per year based on submitted entries.
By using recycled asphalt, involving Carroll County Career and Technology Center students and creating a model that other cities and towns can use, the skate park project exceeded much of what the organization was looking for.
The park, which opened in June, was built with input from local skaters who worked together last year to create a vision of the perfect park.
The conceived design has a variety of terrain for beginners to experts and has attracted hundreds to the city.
Marge Wolf, city administrator for Westminster, said the significance of the award goes beyond a plaque.
“It’s really nice to get kudos from your boss, but there really is nothing like getting those same kudos from your peers,” she said. “It is all judged by municipal officials, and you trust them to have a good idea of what constitutes excellence.”
And perhaps most important, it gives the city a reputation for completing projects the right way.
“Other municipal officials and state agencies look at [future] proposal[s] differently,” she said. “They may look at it and say, ‘Westminster will do a good job because they’ve done a good job in the past.’”
In 1989, Sykesville was similarly awarded the honor for completing a major storm-water system with the cooperation of the townspeople.
The project’s scope involved laying a 5-foot-diameter pipe in a hole about 10 feet wide by 10 feet deep for a distance of 1,650 feet, according to an MML project summary. And the entire project was close to downtown buildings but was deemed necessary to reduce flooding and storm water problems.
Easements for 29 parcels were donated by property owners, saving the city enough money to construct an additional 200 feet of pipe. The property owners were convinced of the benefits of the project and so the pipeline was complete along Main Street from the Patapsco River to Spout Hill Road.
