Barbecue fundraiser benefits planned skate park

A barbecue fundraiser to benefit the planned Lincoln Skatepark drew an estimated 200-300 people to Hooper park Saturday, June 29 to support efforts by Lincoln school students to build a skate park for Lincoln.

Employees from the Lincoln Ranger District, working on their own time, spent their free time over the last four weeks coordinating the event after Jarel Kurtz, the District's fire management officer, heard about the project during an Envision Lincoln meeting he attended.

Kurtz felt it was a good opportunity to help the committee and contacted a couple other employees he thought might be interested in helping.

"Guys on the fire crew bought all the meat, people bought all the plates and serving stuff. So all the proceeds definitely got to the skate park," Kurtz said.

Kurtz said Todd Burbridge and Jacob Stevens got the barbecue started at 11 p.m. the night before `the event and began slow-cooking the pork shoulder at about midnight.

"The chicken went on, I think at 9 o'clock this morning," he said.

In addition to the barbecue, the group also gathered donations for a silent auction.

"The group of us started hitting some of the breweries and distilleries. and there's a skate place in Missoula," he said. "People were super giving. We got donations from Missoula to Helena to Lincoln. The community has really been awesome supporting this."

Makenzie Storey, the president of the Lincoln Skate Park Committee, was grateful for the work done by the group from the Forest Service, and admitted to being surprised by the turnout.

"It's a bigger turnout than I thought," she said. "There are a lot of people here supporting us I honestly didn't think would."

Although the skate park has had the support of the Lincoln Park Board, the City- County Park Board and the County Commission since this spring, the committee still needed to find a non-profit fiscal sponsor they could work with to raise money, and they had to find an organization willing to carry the contract for the construction of the park itself.

Karyn Good, who has taken a leading role in helping the Skatepark committee develop their plans, said both of those obstacles have been overcome thanks to Make It Happen Montana of Lewistown and the Lincoln Valley Chamber of Commerce.

"We're good to go as far as the county is concerned," Good said. "We've got all our bases covered. We've got a fiscal sponsor, somebody to hold the contract until the contract is finished, and we've got a place to put the skate park".

Make It Happen, established in 2016 to help bring a skate park to Lewistown, agreed in May to act as the project's fiscal sponsor

"The thing they're doing that's really special that a lot of fiscal sponsors can't offer, is they're only charging us one percent. Most fiscal sponsors charge at least 10 percent fee. So, they're doing this for close to nothing," good said.

Likewise, the LVCC agreed at their June meeting to hold the contract for the construction of the Skatepark, which will be built by Evergreen Skateparks of Portland. Although Lewis and Clark County supports the project, they couldn't carry the contract without it being subject to the county's administrative, design and bidding processes.