A surprising number of teens showed up at the South Park Community Center June 24 to voice their opinions to Seattle Parks Superintendent Tim Gallagher about the kinds of resources they wanted from the department.

Gallagher has been attending a series of neighborhood meetings to garner community feedback on how the parks department has been meeting the need of the city.

“We’ve had a large number of teens attend these meetings and it’s good to see,” Gallagher said. “They represent quite a different crowd.”

At the Wednesday meeting, the teens discussed with Gallagher and the number of city employees in attendance the need for outdoor basketball hoops at the South Park Community Center.

“At the Van Asselt meeting we had a few teens attend but after that meeting we saw an even bigger number of kids playing at the basketball hoops outside the community center,” Gallagher said. “Once we saw the number of teens at the South Park meeting, we definitely knew that we were missing something.”

Currently, the South Park gym has limited open gym hours and people 18 years and older must pay a $2 fee to play basketball.

Many of the teens pointed out the benefits to having outdoor hoops, such as not having to pay to use them (since many do not have a source of income), the ability to play at anytime and being able to enjoy the outdoors.

One teen explained how she would have to travel on two buses to get to the closest outdoor hoop from South Park, often making her mother worry for her safety. Having outdoor basketball courts in close proximity to her home, would ease many parent's worries, she told Gallagher.

One West Seattle resident proposed using the money from the newly passed Parks Levy to subsidize the $2 fee, however Gallagher explained that the funding was only to be used for capital projects.

But he said there might be an opportunity through the levy's Opportunity Fund, a $15 million pot of money set aside for community-initiated projects. The first round of projects to be funded with the Opportunity Fund will be next year, Gallagher said.

Priority is given to projects that address a park or open space deficiency, and are in areas experiencing growth, particularly in city-designated “urban villages” or in “revitalization areas.”

Gallagher said the department had budgeted a program to start this year for improving and developing basketball courts citywide, but it was one of the elements cuts from the budget due to the recession.

“If the real estate market comes back we’ll bring back that program," Gallagher said. "But the quicker option would be with the parks levy that was passed in October."