by Dennis Dalman
Former Sartell Mayor Joe Perske said he thinks it’s a crying shame that most of the city’s kids have no place in the city to ice skate.
He fondly recalls he so loved to skate and play hockey when he was a boy.
At the Jan. 24 city-council meeting, Perske addressed the council members, lamenting the fact ice rinks are virtually non-existent for pleasure skating, except for the very small one in Val Smith Park.
One day, Perske drove to that park and saw a mother and her two children trying to skate on the small rink that was covered with an inch or two of snow.
St. Cloud, he said, boasts eight hockey rinks and six pleasure-skating rinks.
“We don’t see that in Sartell,” Perske told the council. “We can do better than that and we should do better than that.”
For many years, Sartell did have an outdoor pleasure-skating rink where hockey games could also be played. It was the big outdoor rink, with fenced border, night lights and warming house just to the south of the Bernick’s Arena in Pinecone Regional Park.
“The city even bought a Zamboni for that rink” he noted. “It was a first-class operation,” adding it was torn down a few years ago in order to build an all-sports indoor facility on that site.
Perske is a former long-time teacher and soccer coach who served as a Sartell mayor and as a city council member. He is now a Stearns County commissioner.
He recalled in years past there had been lots of talk and public excitement of placing in Pinecone Central Park a swimming pool, a skating park and even a library.
“None of that has happened,” he said. “I’m asking (the city) for accountability.
“What about the school kids, families, those kids with a second-hand $5 pair of skates from a used store or a garage sale? What about the non-varsity kids?”
There are no skating opportunities in Sartell for them, Perske concluded. He thanked the council for listening to his concerns.
