Rib Lake board looks at options for community skating rink

What will become of the Community Ice Rink was discussed at the School District of Rib Lake Board of Education meeting on February 13.

John Hein, who has been the caretaker of the ice rink for many years, is stepping away from making the ice. He highlighted that he will still help with ensuring the quality of the ice.

When the rink was first created it was a community site, but it soon warped into an area for middle school and high school phy-ed classes. Now it is the schools who use it almost exclusively.

Upon Hein’s retirement from the Taylor County Highway Department in 2012 he was no longer authorized to use their loader, which was rented out for maintenance of the rink.

A poll was put out to elementary through eighth grade classes to see who all would be interested in using the rink, which only netted a 10% affirmative response.

With the combination of inaccessible equipment and low appeal rate, Hein was faced with a serious dilemma.

The rink was relatively self sufficient through assorted incomes such as skate rentals and use, but the fall in use made that infeasible.

It was at that point the village of Rib Lake board stepped in to lend a helping hand to Hein, in what he referred to as a “most admirable move,” to begin a cooperative agreement to keep the rink going.

With the partnership, Hein has been able to continue making ice for the rink that, as he put it, “Rivals arena ice. Not quite up to it, but very close.”

He commended the village and school boards, as well as the maintenance crews participating in the effort to keep the rink going: “Everyone is working really well together. I think it’s worth while.”

There are several suggestions to economize the process of making and maintaining the ice rink.

The prospect of hiring somebody part time to perform the necessary work that Hein has done in the past is one such suggestion.

“It’s not that time consuming,” Hein said. “Especially the making of the ice. If I had to put an hour figure on it I would say, depending on the conditions, maybe about 30 hours... I think between the village crew and the crew at the school, people could get in an hour here or there. If that can’t be done, we start looking for somebody [to hire].”

The board members were in general agreement that the ice rink is important to have.

“It’s rare to have a facility like that in a community, especially one of this size,” said board president Steve Martin.

“We see it as a community asset,” said Rick Cardey, the Rib Lake High School and Middle School principal. “It’s unique to Rib Lake and it definitely gets used... I think we are going to approach it as we’d like to continue on.”

“My biggest concern is that we need that driving force,” Cardey continued, pointing out that Hein always stayed on top of proper ice maintenance.

Mascot

Board members reported that a resolution at the recent Wisconsin Association of School Boards convention to recommend banning Native American mascots failed, with 101 votes in favor and 218 votes opposed.

“Me, personally, I was thrilled,” said Martin. “This [choice] should be left up to local communities to make, this shouldn’t come out of Madison... I love our mascot.” Fellow board member Rollie Thums said that the mascot is a point of pride: “Why would you have a mascot that you make fun of? There’s a song on the board about it, you have cheers about it. Mascots are not negative, mascots are positive... I don’t think there’s ever been any disrespect for our mascot, there’s only ever been respect.”

“We do it in a very honorable way,” Martin agreed, referring to the sports teams as a “culture of champions.”

Website

Rib Lake School District’s website is in need of a major overhaul.

Board president Martin pointed out that it is all around difficult, particularly since there is a lack of a search engine to enable easy browsing.

“We have a very minimal interactive website,” said principal Cardey, who hopes to apply for several grants that would reduce the cost of the update.

The initial cost is $3,900, but a Smart Thinking grant could take up to $1,000 off the price, a second possible $1,000 grant could drop the cost even lower.

District IT and webmaster Gayle Perrin has already begun the initial steps of implementing the new website.

The update will streamline the user interface, and fit properly on the screens of mobile devices. It is planned to include live posts from Rib Lake’s social media accounts and display information such as the final score of sporting events, or if there is a snow-day.

The Rib Lake Board of Education wants to make sure that other districts know about Rib Lake, and with everything going so well, that the new website will be a positive addition to their overall appearance.

“People need to find out that we might be small, but we’re mighty,” Thums stated.