Friday, December 18, 2009
Weymouth Athletic Fields
You only need to be a parent to recognize the need for more and better athletic fields in the Town Of Weymouth. The two soccer fields located behind Ralph Talbot School are an example. No more than a few years old, they have already been over-used to the point that they have become hazardous. Youth football and lacrosse programs have difficulty every year securing fields. The high school football program recently had to play “home games” out of town because Weymouth’s only football field could not be used. Steve Reilly, the President of Weymouth Youth Soccer, has a good idea, and that is to form a non-profit company that will raise funds for the renovation of, in his case, Riley Field. It’s a good idea because a non-profit company can help relieve the burden of field maintenance from cash strapped cities and towns.
The “good idea” takes a rather political turn however when it becomes a grandiose sports complex scheme complete with temporary ownership agreements. Mr. Reilly would like to build football and baseball fields to complement the soccer. This sounds vaguely familiar. Didn’t we already go through this a couple of years ago? I think I remember the present Mayor and six present Town Council members voting against a similar plan for Legion Field. It would appear hypocritical to vote for the same plan only a mile away on a location that is half the size of Legion. That coupled with neighbor complaints which have already surfaced, appear to have doomed the project before it has started.
The thing about non-profit companies is that they are to be used for the good of their cause, in this case youth sports, not for steering political agenda. This is the second non-profit company that has mysteriously appeared in the guise of improving our community, the other being “Friends Of Legion Field”. In reality these companies are being used to parlay support for a particular agenda; the agendas being, making Riley Field a multi sport complex, and the other to make Legion into “open space”, another term for walking park. There are plenty of walking parks throughout town and not enough athletic fields.
Common sense would dictate that soccer should remain at Riley Field and funding should be raised by those that use it, to maintain it, as is. A non-profit company could be responsible for revitalizing the fields and rotating their use so that none are over-used as well as addressing neighborhood concerns. Legion Field on the other hand, has historically been used for football and should continue as such. A non-profit company such as Pop Warner, could take advantage of the Historical Committee’s recent vote deeming the entire property historically and culturally significant to Weymouth and therefore worthy of Community Preservation Funds. Presently the Community Preservation Committee is under the impression that only the wall surrounding the field complies with the strict guidelines of the CPA.
If that doesn’t make sense then certainly Legion would comply with the recent Supreme Judicial Court ruling involving the City Of Newton. A recent inquiry to the Community Preservation Coalition reveals “The Court appears to have left an opening for projects in existing parks which have become so deteriorated that they have “ceased to exist” for recreational purposes. The Court said that if a municipality had “land that, at some point in the past, ceased to exist for recreational purposes…CPA funds could be appropriated for the necessary costs of the project.”
Lastly, the “Weymouth Sports Council” could certainly be put to good use raising funds to keep track of scheduling, usage and maintenance of all the fields around Weymouth; a more worthy non-profit mission, that would certainly help our obviously over burdened town government from letting our athletic fields fall into further disrepair.
POSTED BY STAN on December 18, 2009
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Comments
interesting article
Posted by: Ugly Mutt | January 15, 2010 07:22 AM