disc golf basket removal

But it’s the way it was done that players found especially insulting. 

“It was unnecessary and disrespectful,” said Dave Pigott, president of Disc Golf Billings.

City crews removed the disc golf baskets from the top of the rimrock formation in the Diamond X area of Phipps Park by simply tossing them over the edge.  

“They threw them off the side of the rim,” said disc golf player Trevor Pellinen.

The city’s parks department acknowledged the blunder. 

The crew working at the park “just hit the easy button and pitched some of them off,” said Mike Pigg, superintendent of parks for the City of Billings. 

Members of the club and the parks department have been in contact the last two days and will meet next week to discuss the best way forward. 

“I want to give them the opportunity to make it right,” Pigott said. 

And parks officials are eager to work with the players. Pigg has invited the club to submit ideas or designs with possible ways to lay out a disc golf course at Phipps Park that would be safe both for players and for others users of the park. 

“We’ll help them work with that,” Pigg said. 

The park still has 18 baskets in place and it’s open to disc golfers.

“They can still go there and play,” said parks director Mike Whitaker. 

Safety is an issue for the parks department and was the reason Pigg and Whitaker gave for the removal of the eight baskets at Phipps Park. The baskets were placed in areas atop the rimrocks that the city had designated a “no-use zone.”

In 2016, a rock slide at the park prompted the city to bring in a geotechnical engineering firm to evaluate the area. The firm’s report led the parks department to designate areas around the base of the cliffs and certain spots at the top as no-use zones. 

Parks crews have repeatedly placed signs at the park demarcating the dangerous areas and each time the signs are vandalized or removed, Pigg said. 

When the baskets appeared at the top of the rimrock the department believed the best course of action was to remove them, Pigg said. 

“Sometimes we’re forced to remove things that are unsafe,” he said. 

Pigott and other players were surprised by the move. He was aware of the 2016 rock slide and recognized the areas at the base of the rimrock formation that had been cordoned off. But he and the other players were never aware that the top of the formation was off-limits. 

Both the parks department and Pigott said communication between the two groups has been infrequent or nonexistent, and receiving no advanced warning from the city that crews would be removing the baskets was frustrating to the players. 

“The lack of communication between them and us is what really set us off,” Pigott said. 

The baskets, many of which have been at the park for 20 years, were installed by disc golf players over the years and can cost roughly $500 a piece, he said. 

Placement of the baskets in the park’s no-use zones left the parks department with few options, Pigg said. 

The parks department can be held liable for incidents that happen at city parks. Were parks crews to leave the baskets in an area that the city had determined to be unsafe, it could be seen as tacit approval by the parks department leaving the city open to a lawsuit if someone got hurt, he said.