NORTH PROVIDENCE — Mayor Charles Lombardi’s decision to dismantle the skate park that the town opened in Stephen Olney Park eight months ago is coming under fire from members of the Town Council, who say his move has put scores of youngsters in harm’s way. They say the closing may well have been avoided if he consulted with them first.

“I’m very upset. There are a lot of kids who use that park, and I’m sure we could have worked something out had the mayor let us know what he had in mind,” said Councilman Mansuet Giusti. The councilman said he has received numerous calls in the last few days from constituents, all opposed to the closing.

Councilman Frank A. Manfredi said he, too, was outraged by the mayor’s move, calling it another example of the “totalitarianism” practiced by the mayor since taking office in April.

“What’s next?” he asked. “Will he fill the pool at the Recreation Center with cement should people use it improperly, or will he close the playgrounds for our tots because someone drew graffiti. While he’s at it, maybe he should cancel Halloween.”

Members of the council said they only learned of the mayor’s decision to dismantle the $95,000 park, which opened in January with the help of a $55,000 state grant, by hearing it on television or reading it in a newspaper.

Lombardi said he had ordered the dismantling after getting complaints that skateboarders were littering in the park, and that the unlit park had become an attractive nuisance for young people who kept neighbors awake with noise from their boom boxes.

Since the dismantling began on Thursday, skateboarders said they could not believe that the mayor would seriously take the complaint of one neighbor and not listen to the voices of the scores of youngsters for whom the park has become a welcome oasis.

“Don’t they know that this park is getting us out of trouble?” said 15-year-old Patrick Colannino, a student at North Providence High School.

“If we can’t have this park, we’re going to go out onto the streets or to some of the other places they don’t want us to go, such as the front of the library,” said Joey Castello, 16, another North Providence High student.

The skateboarders, who say they have the support of many of their teachers, have already started collecting signatures on a petition to town officials asking that the skateboard park be kept open.

The petition, initiated by sophomores Jillian Maine, 15, and Chelsea Dolan, 14, had 95 signatures from students by early afternoon Friday, just a day after dismantling began. The skateboarders predicted they would have hundreds of more names before they were done.

Friday, when youths continued to skateboard on the two ramps that had not yet been taken down, the skateboarders acknowledged that they did have a problem with one skateboarder who they described as a little crazy and who had tried to set fire to one of the ramps several months ago.

“We told him he wasn’t welcome and he was not to return,” said one skateboarder.

Other than that, the youths said, skateboarders have always been respectful of property and never stay beyond dark. “If there is anyone making noise at night it’s not us, because we’re not going to skateboard with no light,” one skateboarder said.

William Coico, 18, a graduate of North Providence High, visited the skateboard park at 8 a.m. Friday to watch town workers arrive to continue the dismantling. He said he watched from the side. “I was just one person. What could I do?” he said. “I can tell you this though. Some of the workers were giving us suggestions as to what we should do.”

Coico said taking down a skateboard park because of graffiti made no sense. “Say there is graffiti on the basketball courts. Are they going to take them down, too?”

Yesterday, Council President Joseph S. Burchfield said that based on the phone calls he’s received, people are disappointed at the mayor’s move.

“I think the council would have appreciated a call,” he said. “Everyone I’ve spoken to wishes he had called to tell us what he was planning.”

Councilman John Zambarano said the skateboard park is in the middle of his district and he never received a complaint from anyone about the park. So the news that there were problems there took him by surprise.

“I want to see what the problems were before saying he was right or wrong. If there were reasons to close the park so be it, but I would like to see those reasons.”

Councilman Paul Caranci said, “It just seems that every day we find the mayor doing something on his own without notifying anybody. I suppose he has the authority to close it down, but this is something that the council just dedicated. He took it down from the complaint from one neighbor, when there are hundreds of kids using the park.”

Caranci, Manfredi and Giusti said that had the mayor come to them first, they could have worked something out.

Caranci said if late night visits were a problem, the solution could have been a fence, similar to the one the mayor had erected to keep people away from Green Acres Country Day School when he wanted to close it down.

Manfredi said that if the council had been alerted earlier, it could have arranged a meeting with the children and their parents and neighbors to seek a solution. “What he should have done is have a curfew put in place and have police enforce that time limit. I fail to see the reason for the shutdown.”

Caranci and Giusti said they were surprised by a comment from Rocco Gesualdi, Lombardi’s director of administration, that the $55,000 grant that was supposed to go toward the building of the park had never been received. The state typically releases the money after getting proof that the work has been accomplished, so it is evident, they said, that either Lombardi or his predecessor, acting-Mayor John Sisto Jr., didn’t file the necessary paperwork.

“Now, I wonder if the town can receive the money, now that it has dismantled the park,” said Caranci.

For his part, Mayor Lombardi insisted yesterday “anyone who says the park should have not have come down has no respect for public safety.”

He added that he had no legal obligation to notify the council members because it falls under his jurisdiction as public safety director.

At the same time, he said, he is planning to relocate the park to another site that would be more visible to the police. He said he has three sites that are being reviewed by himself, the police chief and the director of recreation.

Councilman Giusti said if the skate park were relocated he would recommend placing it another part of Stephen Olney Park, at what is now a “third parking lot” on a part of the park closer to Smithfield Road.

rdujardi@projo.com