“What we have here,” she told thefrontpageonline.com, “is that you are dealing with campaign talk. If it were not for the election, I don’t think this would be on the table.
“Not only that, I do not believe this is an important subject for the community.
“I think a small number of people are trying to stir up interest — playing to voters — out in the community. This is a deliberate attempt to stir up people.”
Never one to mask her true feelings, Ms. Gross described the drive to shift the location of the Skateboard Park as “either an attempt to showcase your candidate or to make another candidate look bad.”
Dead Should Mean Dead, Says Gross
Mr. Corlin is actively involved in the campaign of Scott Malsin, one of the three candidates running for the City Council in the April 11 election. Ms. Gross’s second reference apparently was aimed at Vice Mayor Gary Silbiger, who favors the Upper location.
For added emphasis, Ms. Gross restated her well-known conviction that revisiting a decided issue is wrong. “I have said many times once a vote is taken, that should be it,” she said. “Once the City Council speaks, that should be the end of t.”
And so the torridly argued matter of whether the lush, picnic-friendly green grass of the Upper Level should be torn up to accommodate a Skateboard Park will be debated all over.
The decision to reopen the discussion makes the Parks and Rec Commission member Jeff Cooper the happiest man in town . Along with Mr. Corlin, he is the other force at City Hall who is hoping to get the City Council to overturn its bitterly contested verdict.
At high noon on Saturday, Mr. Cooper is hosting a community picnic — for any resident who agrees with him that the environmentally friendly Upper Level should not be disturbed to accommodate a Skateboard Park when, he says, perfectly fine space is available on the Lower Level.
While enough words have filled the air this week to make the atmosphere resemble early spring smog, all of the rhetoric may be moot.
Councilmember Steve Rose announced that he intends to recreate his Yes vote on the Upper Level as he did on the first round of balloting last month. Counting the Yes votes of Ms. Gross and Mayor Albert Vera, that would appear to kill the issue again.
