Park District Meeting Addresses H-F Ice Arena Rumors

The H-F Park District held a special meeting Tuesday night to address many of the concerns and rumors surrounding the park district’s recent decision to .

“Before we begin, I want to say: the rink is not closing,” H-F Ice Arena Manager Doug Boehm said, addressing a rumor that had been circulating amongst the parents. “The ice rink, like all of us and some of our other facilities, (is) going through some tough times. We have to tighten our belts, we have to look at how we operate and we have to be smarter and we have to do more with less.”

A slew of questions erupted from the audience shortly after Boehm opened the meeting up for discussion. Most of the questions focused on two concerns: many parents wanted to know what is going on regarding future decisions, especially those pertaining to programming and some parents thought there had been too many changes recently.

“There is a lot of change going on … there is a lot of increase in cost going on,” said a mother, who asked that her name not be published. “I’m just concerned that all of this change is going to cause people to scatter, and it’s going to make the ice arena suffer.”

Boehm said decisions regarding various programs at the ice arena will be made by the end of the month. In addition, he acknowledged the request to keep parents better informed on ice arena happenings.

While some programs may be subject to change, Boehm maintained that the elimination of programs is not on the agenda. The "Icettes" program, for instance, will still iexist, however, it will be a private club as opposed to an in-house program.

“We are going to maintain our freestyle ice (program), we are going to maintain our learn-to-skate program,” Boehm said. “Nothing is going away.”