New Canaan will spend about $30,000 this fall improving baseball and softball fields that officials say were in subpar condition this spring, drawing criticism from the groups that use them.
One of the softball fields at Waveny typically used by men’s rec leagues. Credit: Michael Dinan
Most of the money will go to repair what are commonly referred to as the men’s rec softball fields at Waveny and the girls’ softball diamonds at the Orchard and Water Tower fields, Parks Superintendent John Howe said by way of requesting the funds during Tuesday’s Board of Selectmen meeting.
“They’re due, as we try to rotate around (the 10 public parks’ baseball and softball fields in New Canaan),” Howe said during the meeting, held in the Training Room at the New Canaan Police Department.
Conner Field. Credit: Terry Dinan
“The other work, on the small fields at Conner and Saxe, it’s minor work, relatively speaking, and that is why the prices are less,” Howe said.
The selectmen voted 3-0 in favor of the $30,081 allocation: $11,845 to Athletic Field Services for the Waveny softball fields, $6,461 for Greg Twardy Jr. Landscape Service for Conner, Saxe and Mead (main field) baseball fields and 11,775 for Read Custom Soils for infield clay. (The figures include contingency funds.)
The main baseball field at Mead Park. This is where the NCHS Rams play their home games. Credit: Michael Dinan
The improvements to the fields that rec softball players use are sorely needed, officials said. First Selectman Rob Mallozzi said during the meeting that his office fielded many complaints from players in the spring, and so he went and saw the fields himself.
Howe said the town has been “putting band-aids on it for a while.”
“Part of what is not in this bid that we can do in-house is the bench areas,” Howe said. “We are going to improve them, but that is work that we can work we can easily do, to remove what is there from fresh stone and it is operational type work. So they should be happy next spring.”
The Orchard Field, used by softball players, at Waveny Park. Cedit: Michael Dinan
He added that the work on the men’s softball fields will temporarily displace some boys’ fall baseball programs. Interestingly, Howe said during the meeting that he had met this week with the co-presidents of New Canaan Baseball, “and they are looking into—since we bid out more work than we have money for—they are looking into possibly supplementing and doing more work on some of the fields they use.”
Private organizations such as New Canaan Baseball run most of the youth sports programs in New Canaan, and the town and residents continue to benefit from their ability to take in money and fund capital projects. Recently, town officials including Selectman Nick Williams have described those projects as apart from what rightly should be a consistently applied and transparent per-player fee that the town takes in from all youth sports organizations for fields upkeep and upgrades.
“The bottom line is, we shouldn’t be relying on voluntary contributions for the town to do what the town should be doing itself. I feel strongly about that. There are certain things that the town should pay for, as a town.” / Nick Williams
Nick Williams statement already being put to the test. Shows how impractical his idea really is. Without private contributions the town would not have top notch athletic facilities.
Thanks Rick. That’s exactly what struck me, too, during the meeting. I would add three things about Williams’ comments, for context:
1. As far as the work of the Youth Sports Committee goes—specifically, in terms of a newly calculated per-player fee that is collected equally across all private youth sports organizations—that is still a young endeavor, and I’m not sure the YSC has had time since its September meeting to do all the work of determining what is that fee, communicating with the various youth sports groups and then collecting it.
2. I am not sure anyone has said that the town does not want the generous contributions of private organizations (including New Canaan Baseball, Football and Lacrosse). My take on what Williams had said is that New Canaan ought to try and move in a direction where the basic upkeep of its playing fields is coming from taxpayer funds. Because nobody probed deeper at the Oct. 7 selectmen meeting, it wasn’t clear to me just what this new capital work from New Canaan Baseball would involve, whether it’s just to make the fields playable or for something specific and extra.
3. My feeling from the Youth Sports Committee discussion was that the bigger goal in “opening up the books,” so to speak, of what private youth sports groups are paying for in terms of the fields—and one barrier to that, clearly, is just the way the town works in terms of how quick and easy it is to pay for a project out of a dedicated donation from the likes of New Canaan Baseball, as opposed to, say, the Parks Department funneling that money into the General Fund and then going through the regular process to get the allocation back—is that there is no risk or perception of a “pay to play” model. In other words, what Williams and proponents of the YSC push are saying, is that there must be equal field time and specific field preference given to all sports, regardless of how much they can afford to pay above and beyond the town’s across-the-board fee.
No doubt that it’s a bit of a contradiction to what Nick Williams is trying to do. Perhaps until he and the YSC can fully flush out the details, the town should put a temporary moratorium on private funding of athletic field projects.
I am thrilled to hear that we are making long overdue improvements. Our baseball fields are not properly drained and leveled and are full of rocks and duck feces most of the year. We don’t even have covers for the infield. It is a disgrace to our baseball program, which is negatively impacting the long-term pipeline for baseball players at the high school. Look at the fields in neighboring towns as a point of reference. I would be interested to know how Darien paid for its recent overhaul of its ball fields and what portion came from tax dollars versus private funding.
All I can say is “finally!”