Residents trying to form a stewardship group with the Seattle Parks and Recreation department hope to increase their role in protecting Seattle's only skate bowl from "tags" and other vandalism.

Leading that effort is Scott Shinn, a member of parks department skatepark advisory committee and director of the advocacy group Parents for Skateparks. Shinn wants the parks department to change its policy that prohibits registered volunteers from removing graffiti from parks.

Not only would it help keep the park clean, it could save public resources and build community at the same time, he said.

"Ideally, I'd like to see a partnership between the department and the citizens who want to make a difference," said Shinn.

The departments' more than 350 "friends of" groups work in conjunction with the city on various efforts, including events, landscaping and restoration projects. Shinn hopes to create Friends of the Ballard Bowl with a graffiti removal focus.

"This would be a great way to make sure that the new bowl is maintained properly and would give the skate community an outreach mechanism with other groups who share an interest in this park," he said.

Parks department spokesperson Dewey Potter said health and safety concerns, as well as "the need to maintain our assets without undue damage," prevent volunteers from being able to remove graffiti.

Parks' workers who remove graffiti are union represented and trained and certified in graffiti removal techniques, some which involve hazardous chemicals. Parks doesn't plan on investing that amount of training in a volunteer, said Potter.

The workers respond to graffiti work orders for Commons within a reasonable time period, she said, about two days.

But some people who use the park everyday would rather do it themselves, said Ryan Barth, chair of the city's skatepark advisory council.

"We want it to be cleaned up right away," Barth said.

Shinn said he understands the city's concerns but park goers and skaters often remove graffiti anyways - and no one gets hurt.

"This highlights the disconnection between citizens who just want to be good stewards of the public space and a city agency whose job it is to maintain the public property," Shinn said.

Since the park opened in 2005, 19 work orders have been called in to remove graffiti from the bowl and other surfaces. It costs the department about $400 per removal in materials and labor.

At the Commons bowl workers have had to use pressure washing, chemicals and sand treatments that eventually will cause pits in the bowl surface. In the wrong hands sandblasting can severely damage some surfaces.

There are hundreds of products that claim to remove graffiti, such as peel away paint removers and hot water and baking soda concoctions. One popular method is to simply paint over it, but painting over the graffiti in the bowl would seal its porous surface.

The department is in the process of testing sealants for the bowl that will help protect it from graffiti and still keep it "skatable," said Potter.

Terry Holme, a member of the Board of Parks Commission, said he encourages people to bring these kinds of issues to the board, especially if citizens are "butting up against bureaucracy."

"I would like to see (the parks department) be more encouraging of people to bring issues to the parks advisory board..." he said. "It's a citizen board but the department is quite responsive to us."

Holme said, on the surface, volunteer graffiti removal seems like a good idea.

"I think it's probably a matter of getting the right people connected," said Holme. "The Ballard Bowl on many levels is a part of the learning curve...."and could be used as a model for how other skate parks are dealt with.

To serve Seattle's growing population of skateboarders, which is expected to expand from about 20,000 to 24,000 by 2020, the city completed a citywide skatepark plan last year. It identifies 26 spots throughout the city for various sized skateparks.

Currently the plan has no funds earmarked but the parks department plans to ask for money in future years' budgets.

Though Shinn pointed out that some graffiti is considered art, that isn't the kind seen mostly at Ballard Commons Park. Most of the graffiti there is what is commonly referred to as "tags," a logo that depicts someone's nickname.

He also debunks the perception that it must be the skateboarders vandalizing property around skateparks.

"Why would a skateboarder want to graffiti their own public space?" said Shinn. "It's not unique to skateboarding, it's a function of a popular activity in a dense urban space."

Graffiti has little to do with the presence of a particular sport, it's a product of how many people use the space, and, in this case, that's a lot, said Shinn.

Since the Seattle Center Skate Park was sold to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and demolished in January, Ballard has the only skate bowl for the city's 20,000-and-growing skateboarders.

And community pride in the bowl runs deep. Skateboarders and parents of skateboarders who saw the need to support the thriving sport built the original Ballard Bowl in 2002.

Volunteers constructed what was supposed to be a temporary bowl at the northwest corner of 22nd Avenue Northwest and Northwest 57th Street in the old Segway parking lot. It soon became a regional attraction and a community gathering spot.

But the parks department had plans to demolish it because it wasn't in the original design for a new Ballard park at that site.

Equipped with savvy community activists, thousands of skateboard supporters launched an organized campaign to save the bowl. They signed petitions, attended community meetings in droves and even held a march through downtown Seattle, eventually convincing the city to construct a new bowl at what would be Ballard Commons Park.

The parks department has done a good job maintaining the new bowl, said Shinn, but it might benefit from having a network of people that could remove the markings quicker.

These kinds of stewardship ideas could also serve as a model to other neighborhoods that will have skateparks built in their neighborhoods, said Barth.

"We're trying to come up with recipes for folks to come up with resources," Barth said. "We want to empower teenaged kids, parents and general users to come up with ideas so that they can shepherd and maintain their park."

Rebekah Schilperoort may be reached at 783.1244 or rebekahs@ballardnewstribune.com