Angry parents write new entry in basketball diary
Residents criticize trustees for their handling of hoop complaints
The Daily Mail
June 25, 2009

CATSKILL — Catskill police asked several residents to move their mobile basketball hoops away from roadsides Monday evening and during the day in response to complaints made during a Village Board meeting about games occurring in front of Lorenzo Ivery’s home on Greene Street and in front of another home on High Street.

Several residents and parents of teenagers and younger children, Ivery included, are upset with the way the issue was handled by Catskill Village President Vincent Seeley.

“My kids have been playing in the neighborhood just like every other kid for the last 10 years and now we are being told what we can’t do in our neighborhood,” he said. “I thought this was America.”

At the board meeting, a neighbor of Ivery’s said children who use the court have been known to gesture at motorists who interrupt the sometimes loud basketball games.

Another resident at the meeting said he worried that the children playing in the streets could be harmed if a driver did not obey stop signs or skidded on wet pavement.

Ivery said police could do more to punish the motorists he sees who frequently ignore stop signs at the intersection of Greene and Broad streets near his residence.

He charged that individuals who do not want to live around children should not move to neighborhoods where children live.

Both Ivery and the neighbor have acknowledged that they have a strained relationship.

Seeley requested at Monday’s meeting that Chief David Darling dispatch officers throughout the Village to ask residents to move their hoops so that children would not play in the street.

Denise Davis of Post Avenue and Suzanne Paolino of Sunset Street, were both contacted by Catskill Police officers Tuesday.

Davis said she was asked to move their hoop to the back of her gravel driveway. The hoop was not moved, she said, because the property is outside the village line.

She said many other homes in the neighborhood have gravel driveways and roadside basketball hoops.

“The boys need to be able to play,” she said.

Davis said neighbors had never complained about her 11-year-old son Matt and his friends playing in the street. Matt, she said, always moves out of the way for traffic to pass.

“[Greene Street] was an isolated incident. Why should everybody be punished,” she said.

Paolino agreed.

She said that a number of activities, including riding skateboards and walking, could block traffic.

She wondered why Seeley had asked police to move all hoops near village roads and discuss drafting a new law or ordinance Monday night that would ban in-road games without holding an open meeting to discuss the issue. She said the games had not been raised as a problem during the most recent neighborhood meeting with the Village Board.

Seeley and Village Attorney Alex Betke discussed Wednesday the current state and Village laws that prohibit pedestrians from blocking vehicular or pedestrian traffic and decided that no new law or ordinance was needed.

Darling said Wednesday he and officers have to enforce the rules.

“I do not want kids to stop playing basketball or other sports,” Darling said, “but I do not have the authority to let people play in the street.”

He said officers would respond to any complaints regarding street courts and officers would ask children they found playing games in Village streets and skateboarding in the center of roadways to stop their activities.

He said intoxicated drivers or those driving recklessly could hit children playing in roadways.

Seeley said Wednesday that some children leisurely stroll out of roads when vehicles approach. Children could be struck by vehicles while chasing a stray ball, he said.

He said the issue presented a “Catch-22.”

“If we allow this to continue and there is an accident, we failed from a public safety perspective and if we take action, then we are the bad guys by taking a fun activity away,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Seeley said he was looking into erecting basketball hoops in a parking lot at Dutchmen’s Landing, at Elliott Park, at Catskill High School and the Catskill Community Center.

But parents argued that they like being able to keep an eye on their children while they play outside their houses.

Ivery said he liked being able to call his children into the house if necessary. He said the Community Center closed at 5 p.m. and the courts inside seemed to become wet, slippery and dangerous after an hour or so of play.

Davis also said she enjoyed seeing her 11-year-old son and his friends and worried that something could happen to them on the way to the park.

“Some kids of certain ages cannot walk a mile to the town park,” Suzanne Poalino said. “This is a community of families. Why become a community that is not child-friendly.”

Seeley suggested that adults can initiate and organize child-friendly activities such as fishing trips to Dutchmen’s Landing, walks around Catskill and hikes.

Village Trustee Angelo Amato said he did not think an “across-the-board” decision regarding the courts was an appropriate way to deal with a few isolated complaints.

He, too, noted that children may feel more comfortable playing in their own neighborhoods than they would at a park or school yard away from home.

Darling said that although the issue was raised Monday night specifically to deal with courts on Greene and High streets, his department had handled many complaints in the last few years about courts in different Catskill neighborhoods.

“This is not the first time it has come up,” he said.