MORGANTOWN — One executive order. Five hundred questions.
Likely an exaggeration, but also a pretty accurate description of the days leading up to Thursday’s special meeting of the Board of Park and Recreation Commissioners.
The purpose of the session was to determine whether the Morgantown Ice Arena will remain open given Gov. Jim Justice’s most recent executive order regarding winter sports.
The short answer — it will.
On Nov. 13, Justice prohibited winter sports teams and leagues from meeting for practice or competition until at least Jan. 11.
Given the wording of the order, BOPARC Executive Director Melissa Wiles said there was some expectation that the ice arena may be closed, now barely a month into an already COVID-restricted winter season.
With the Monongalia County Health Department serving as the go-between, BOPARC and its user groups began submitting questions and requesting further details.
Some of those details:
- Public skate is permitted with the modifications in place, including a 40% capacity limit (55 people).
- Youth and adult leagues/teams are not permitted to practice or play games
- Activities related to WVU — club ice hockey and skating — fall under guidance specific to higher education.
- Ice skating and figure skating is fine with the modifications already in place.
But there are still questions.
For instance, what constitutes a practice? According to guidance from the state, one-on-one instruction is permitted.
Can a hockey team get together and practice if they’re just skating?
What is considered shared equipment? Is a hockey puck shared equipment, a curling stone? If so, how do rental skates not fall into that category?
“From today’s meeting you can see that we continue to drill down into details of specifics related to the broad language and are still trying to get some answers as questions come up,” Wiles said.
In the meantime, Wiles explained that between public skates and ice time rented by various user groups despite the increased restrictions, the rink will be able to continue operations.
“In order to remain open, we have to be able to program and rent ice in order to offset costs as best we can under this year’s circumstances,” Wiles said.
She explained that about a month into the season, the rink is running about $7,400 in the red.
“We are in the same situation … in terms of financial matters that we were when we met a couple months ago,” Wiles told the board. “We are going to lose money this year. We are simply trying to provide a public service, work with our user groups, be as safe as possible and continue this season.”
The goal now for BOPARC and the ice rink, as it is for winter sports across West Virginia, is to get to Jan. 11 and hope for the best.
All things considered, multiple board members said they were leaving Thursday’s virtual meeting feeling better than when they arrived.
“I was coming in here ready to be like, ‘Wrap it up. Shut that down.’ But this has been reassuring and it’s nice that it sounds like there’s going to be more opportunity for public programing and it’s not going to just be all private user groups,” Susan Klingensmith said “So that’s kind of silver lining, maybe.”
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