Faron Cotten slides a backside boardslide down the handrail at Centennial Park. After four years of pushing to expand the city's skate park, local skaters will have to continue to wait as city officials put the skatepark addition on hold.

After four years of pushing to expand Lawrence’s skate park, a group of skateboarders has hit another wall.

Despite the City Commission last year approving a $50,000 skate park expansion at Centennial Park, city budget woes likely will delay the project until 2008.

“That was one of the projects we were hoping to fund with sales tax, and basically sales tax revenues are down. So we’ve had to put three or four projects on hold, and that was one of them, unfortunately,” said Mark Hecker, parks and maintenance superintendent for the Lawrence Parks and Recreation Department.

Skaters hoped the city would add new obstacles to the park, including a bowl, like an empty, in-ground swimming pool with rounded edges.

“A huge thing would be something that you don’t have to push to skate around, something you could just get in and ride and not be pushing yourself around the whole time,” said Justin Shiney, 26, a member of the Lawrence Skate Association.

Shiney said he doesn’t come to the Lawrence park very often anymore. Instead, he goes to Topeka and Kansas City area parks that have bigger and better features.

City officials recognize that not much has changed at the skate park since it opened in 1998.

“You’ve got to have something new and different, that’s OK,” Hecker said. “We like to keep changing as we can. Unfortunately, it costs a lot of money.”

Construction on the expansion was scheduled to begin this year. When city leaders realized sales tax revenue was not growing as much as projected, Hecker said the department decided to delay projects not already started. Those included construction of the Burroughs Creek Trail in East Lawrence, a playground at DeVictor Park in West Lawrence and the skate park.

“We’re extremely disappointed,” said Shiney. “But it happens. We can’t control the taxes coming in and the budget.”

Shiney said local skaters have raised almost $3,000 to help fund the park. He plans to continue working with Parks and Recreation until he sees some concrete results.

“If we can’t get it done this year, I don’t see any reason we can’t get it done next year,” said City Commissioner Boog Highberger.