LAKEPORT — BoardStock is up for discussion again at a May 1 public hearing, which the Lakeport City Council scheduled Tuesday night. Consideration of allowing the extreme sports event was back after it was voted down three to one March 20.
Lakeport Mayor Roy Parmentier came out in favor of revisiting BoardStock, saying if the city didn”t host it someone else would.
“If we don”t put it on, the reservation”s going to put it on, and we”re still going to have the same problems, and we”re not going to get paid for our support,” said Parmentier.
He later clarified that he was talking about the possibility of the event being hosted at Konocti Vista Casino & Resort.
Two previous public input sessions on the matter saw an almost even split in the community of those for and against hosting the event in Lakeport. City administrators including the outgoing Acting City Manager Richard Knoll and Parmentier also reported equal amounts of ayes and nays via e-mail and through public input forms circulated at the meetings.
Councilman Robert Rumfelt said his motion was specifically for the city not to host the event, which he said did not rule out discussion of someone else hosting the event at a city facility.
“Like the bass tournament. Somebody else hosted the bass tournament. They just used the water and our property, and they had to take mitigating actions to take care of some problems,” said Rumfelt. He went on to say that by the application before the council, the host would be promoter Rob Stimmel, not the city.
Councilman Buzz Bruns, absent for the March 20 vote, said he had a problem with hosting the event in late September, citing algae problems and low lake level.
“In the latter part of September that lake is going to be green. That lake is going to be full of aquatic plants, and we”re going to have a whole bunch of folks that are going to come up here and say, Lake County sucks because they got a green lake that”s full of aquatic plants,” said Bruns. He went on to suggest hosting the event early in June.
Stimmel addressed some of the concerns raised. Concerning water quality, he said, “unless it”s unfit for someone to be in the water … the athletes will go out and participate and will put on a good show, and television will deliver.”
The optimal water depth, Stimmel said, was six to eight feet, with a minimum of four feet. He expressed openness to hosting the event in September, as he said he had done before, but not in June.
When the next public meeting for BoardStock was scheduled for May 1, one attendee noted that business owners whose establishments don”t close until 6 p.m. would not be able to attend, City Attorney Steve Brookes said they could always write letters to the council members.
Sheriff Rod Mitchell said last year”s event cost his department more than $53,000 in staff time and resources to patrol it. He noted that KHRS has comparatively less road access than Library Park, which prompted him to overstaff the event in the two years it was hosted at the resort to avoid a shortage of deputies on site.
The cost to the LFPD was estimated at $10,000 at a previous meeting, based on the cost to the Kelseyville Fire Department in previous years when the event was hosted at Konocti Harbor Resort & Spa. Fire Chief Ken Wells said Stimmel had expressed openness in a recent meeting of the minds to paying the agency”s cost to provide emergency services.
The city”s decision to rethink its earlier denial reflects the apparent ambiguity that has hung over the discussions since Knoll started talks of hosting the event in February.
Konocti Harbor Resort & Spa had just dropped the event after two years of hosting it, citing risk to the resort”s liquor license after undercover agents from the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control found 40 incidents of minors purchasing and/or consuming alcohol at the resort last year.
A majority of the negative feedback from Lakeport”s citizens was around the issue of alcohol. The city and Chamber of Commerce had discussed it primarily as a “family-type event,” free of alcohol. Skeptics argued that idea wasn”t practical.
The March 20 decision to stop pursuing BoardStock in Lakeport was not unanimous, with Bruns absent, and Rumfelt changing his mind in favor of Knoll”s expressed desire to focus the city”s efforts on other concerns.
Citizens also raised concerns about the “party crowd” the event draws and how that might affect local businesses. Melissa Fulton, executive director of the Lakeport Regional Chamber of Commerce, said at the March 20 meeting that a majority of the businesses she spoke to surrounding the park were open to the event. The chamber itself, however, took a neutral stance neither in favor of or opposed to the city hosting BoardStock.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevelle@record-bee.com
