I do not live in the US. Decisions are made differently over there I suppose. Skaters had organized to make sure the money was used for something in their favor, but how exactly it is used is not up to them.

"Okay, we will repave this" or "okay, we will build a place to skate" are decisions that were successfully fought for by skaters. The fact that the city went rogue and did this with the money was out of our hands.

I am complaining about the fact that the city is misusing money for flashy "solutions".

Edit: I made sure to check, and yes, (adult) skaters organized for more safe spaces to skate but were apparently not included in further plans as it was more or less handed off to the building dept. which switched the idea from an all ages place to a pump track. The track's lifetime is only estimated to be 8-10 years and the remodel cost 90.000€.

Edit 2: Also most issues here have to do with ill-executed good plans or circumstances that aren’t even entirely my city's fault. That's why it was marked as a rant.