Funding to Repair Yorktown Rt. 202 Fields at Issue
A town sports club feels Yorktown officials are off base after balking at approving funds to make needed repairs at three fields in the Downing Park complex off Route 202.
Members of the Yorktown Athletic Club (YAC), including young players, appeared before the Town Board last week to rally behind Todd Orlowski, superintendent of the town’s Parks and Recreation Department, who requested the board utilize $275,000 from the General Fund balance to pay for the renovation of the three baseball surfaces at Veteran’s Memorial Fields.
The town has $130,000 already available for the work from a grant obtained a few years ago by former state Senator Greg Ball, so the total cost to Yorktown would only be approximately $145,000. The fields, which are used by the YAC for baseball and softball, the town’s softball league and the Yorktown School District for freshman baseball and soccer, have never been refurbished in their more than 40-year existence.
“Should we have worked on these fields sooner? Probably,” said Orlowski, who recently took over as superintendent. “The fields are used year in and year out. I’m hopeful this can happen. I know the baseball commissioner wants to see this happen. The fields need to see this happen.”
The Parks and Recreation Department, along with the YAC, have managed to keep the fields playable by throwing down clay and other maintenance, but each one has major issues. Part of one of the fields (90-foot regulation diamond) floods easily after rain, another one constantly creates a dust storm and the field closest to Route 202 has a three-foot drop from the back of the infield to the outfield, which YAC President Bob Kohl said has led to some ankle and knee injuries.
Kohl suggested the town use a small portion of the $1.5 million it received from Spectra Energy for the natural gas pipeline project to fix the fields.
“If something is not done that 90-foot field won’t be playable,” said Kohl, who noted the smaller field near the road is only useable by the league’s youngest players since they aren’t strong enough to hit any balls into the outfield. “Everyone was taken aback by the estimate of having the ballfields replaced. We’ve done a lot of work to improve the town’s facilities.”
Yorktown Supervisor Michael Grace said the board agreed the fields needed to be repaired but maintained no funding was set aside for 2016 for capital projects. However, he expressed optimism that once the board receives an update on the town’s finances, “we should be in good shape.”
“There’s tons of demands on what we do have,” Grace said. “If we funded everything everyone wanted on that particular evening (last Tuesday) we would have spent half a million dollars. Before we do anything we have to find out how much it will cost us. There may be some other ways of getting it done, maybe in-kind contributions. It will be revisited as soon as we can revisit it.”
Orlowski said the goal is to begin the renovations in late August or early September and have them completed by Thanksgiving.
Rick has more than 40 years’ experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, running the gamut from politics and crime to sports and human interest. He has been an editor at Examiner Media since 2012. Read more from Rick’s editor-author bio here. Read Rick’s work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/pezzullo_rick-writer/