In 2000 a group of parents and teens looked at their town and decided a park should exist for teenagers to play, gather and skate. That was the genesis of the Marshfield Skate Park otherwise knows as The Uncle Bud Skate Park. They worked for four years to raise the money to make this happen and volunteers did much of the work to make The Uncle Bud Skate Park a reality.

By all accounts The Uncle Bud Skate Park has been a success except for one.

The one failure of The Uncle Bud Skate Park was accessibility for disabled people. According to the Massachusetts Office on Disability the park should close until accessibility issues are fixed. In fact, Myra Berloff, director of the state Office on Disability said the park:

seems to be a lovely place. It's a place where the community gathers. I understand that these are errors, but I am inclined to say that until it is open to everyone, it is open to no one.

If you haven't gone to The Uncle Bud Skate Park site go ahead and look now.

Now that you've come back you can stop laughing if you can.

The director of the state's disability department wants a skate park made accessible to disabled people. True, the park has other functions that are unrelated to skating, but it's a skate park.

Based on the article there are a few accessibility issues listed:

• Portable toilet that's not accessible. This has been removed.
• A bench that's not accessible. This has been removed, but one can imagine there were other benches.
• Not enough handicapped seats for the theater. The theater holds 400 people. I can see this as an issue.
• Some picnic tables aren't accessible. I imagine others are accessible.
• One of three park entrances is accessible. You can still get into the park.
• There are too few parking spaces that are too far away. I can see this as being an issue.

The town has placed the cost of fixing these issues at $75,000 and will look into ways to fund the fixes later this year.

So what we have here is a classic case of The Law of Unintended Consequences. In this case the disability laws, which are needed, have been put into use to affect something that minimally affects the disabled. The state government's response is to close the park until everyone can access it. Does that make sense?

This happens in business all the time. Rules or guidelines are put into place for very valid reasons, but come back to bite you when the situation changes. How can businesses prevent this?

1. Empower your team to be flexible: Allow your team members to change the rules or guidelines when circumstances present themselves.
2. Train your team to look at the whole situation: In this case the state Office of Disability isn't looking at the entire situation, but focusing on one aspect. Your team should be able to look at the whole situation.
3. Determine when you're pot committed: Pot committed is a poker term that refers to when you have so many of your chips committed to the current hand you have to go all in no matter what. In this case the town is pot committed. So much time, effort and money has been put into the park that they cannot walk away.

It's a silly story from the aspect that the Office of Disability wants to close the park until these items are fixed. This shows a lack of flexibility and is an embarrassment. Maybe if the Office of Disability worked in conjunction with the town to address these needs the money could be found.

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