Following a barely audible presentation by Parks and Recreation Commission Chair Doug Thornton—interrupted by hoots from the sound system—Article 12, a request for money to do spring maintenance of town athletic fields, appeared to be headed nowhere. The Finance Committee was against it, the Select Board had requested it be withdrawn, and speakers were lining up to question the need.
The request was for $15,000 to do spring maintenance, principally aeration and seeding, on the town’s athletic fields. The previous week, commissioners had voted to use most of the remaining money in their $25,650 grounds budget to pay for a study of field conditions, including the testing of soils. The commission needed additional money, Thornton said, if it were to do any maintenance before the end of the fiscal year.
Jim Lee questions how funds requested by Parks and Rec will be spent. (Photo by Tim Clark)
FinCom, however, wanted Parks and Rec to use the remaining money in its budget to do spring maintenance, not a field study. The Parks and Rec-appointed Athletic Fields Planning Subcommittee had “access to the proper expertise,” to study “short-term issues” at no cost to the town, the committee wrote in its recommendation.
As a vote against Article 12 appeared inevitable, Dan Daly, a member and de facto chair of the fields subcommittee, stepped to the mic to offer a friendly amendment. According to the town’s charter, he said, the town administrator is responsible for field maintenance, not Parks and Rec. Give the money to the Department of Public Works and ask it to do maintenance work on the fields before the end of fiscal 2020, which ends June 30, he proposed.
After hastily convening a meeting with Parks and Rec members Joe Reynolds and Steve Victorson, Thornton accepted the amendment and the measure passed.
Daly told the Press that he hadn’t seen himself as a peacemaker; he was thinking of the kids, he said, and just wanted “to get the job done.”
In an email Tuesday morning, Thornton wrote that in his view the amendment was brilliant. “DPW should be coordinating short-term maintenance and now that message has come from the town. There are no minuses.”
“I think the [field] subcommittee[’s] work and a professional field condition review would complement each other in a positive way as we work toward a comprehensive field maintenance plan,” Thornton added.
But as of yet, “there is no field maintenance plan,” Bragan observed Wednesday morning in a brief interview with the Press, and the Athletic Fields Planning Subcommittee has yet to produce one. Moving field maintenance money to DPW was a surprise to both him and DPW Director Tim Kilhart. What needs to happen next, Bragan said, is for Kilhart, Thornton, field liaison Joe Reynolds, and Daly to meet and decide what needs to be done. “What are the priorities? What’s the biggest problem?” If the town lacks the expertise and manpower to do the work, it will contract with a third party, he said.
The athletic fields subcommittee was scheduled to meet Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m. Daly told the Press he planned to release the committee’s preliminary report on the state of the fields then (see “Athletic fields subcommittee clarifies gains in documenting field conditions,” in this week’s Letters to the Editor).
