Council hears plan for new baseball field

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

Van Wert Youth Baseball wants to build a ballfield on the site of the old tennis courts in Jubilee Park — a proposal that found favor with city officials at Monday evening’s City Council meeting.

Eric McCracken, speaking on behalf of Van Wert Youth Baseball, said the group would like to construct a youth-sized field on the site of the former tennis courts to reverse a trend of fewer and fewer ballfields in the city over the past 15 years.

Several of the city’s defunct ballfields were at elementary schools that closed during that period, as well as one on the Van Wert County Fairgrounds. To compound the problem, McCracken said, those ballfields that remain are mostly sized for high school baseball, with 300-foot fences, bigger infields and a high school-depth pitcher’s mound that often is an obstacle to baseball teams made up of younger players.

The Youth Baseball group proposes a ballfield similar to the field at Jubilee Park now mostly used for softball games that features a 250-foot fence and a smaller infield. McCracken said his organization is currently looking for private donations to fund the field, with several individuals and businesses looking at the possibility of providing funds in exchange for naming rights to the field and related facilities.

“We’d kind of like to take it to the next level,” McCracken said of plans to move forward with building a new ballfield. He noted that current plans call for construction to occur in 2012, although that could be moved back a year if funding is slow in coming in.

However, nothing was said at the meeting about who would maintain the field — something that could be a problem for the city until tax revenues start approaching those seen prior to the current economic downturn. Currently, the city is dependent on volunteers to maintain city parks in the summer because of budget-related layoffs in the Parks and Recreation Department.

City Safety-Service Director Jay Fleming said he would work with McCracken and other Youth Baseball officials to move forward with the proposal.

Ironically, just as the city’s local tax revenues appear to be improving, it now looks as if Van Wert and other Ohio municipalities will be losing money through local government funds and other areas as part of budget cuts at the state level.

City Auditor Martha Balyeat said it appears that local government funding for the city would be cut 12½ percent in Fiscal Year 2011 and another 25 percent in FY 2012. The cuts could likely total approximately $90,000 over both years of the biennial budget. With investment income already next to nothing and replacement funding for tangible personal property taxes dwindling away, further state cuts this year could again put the city in a financial hurt.

Two pieces of legislation were also adopted at Monday night’s meeting, with City Council members unanimously adopting a measure to allow Mayor Louis Ehmer to apply for Community Housing Improvement Program (CHIP) funds and the 2011 permanent appropriations ordinance.

Fleming also noted during his report to Council that the city brush pick-up would begin again on the first Monday in April: April 4, and continue through October.

The safety-service director did note one change in the program, stating that trees trimmed or felled by professional tree firms would not be collected by city workers, unless the trees were downed or damaged in a storm, with Fleming noting that storm damage debris would still be collected as it has in the past.

Unlike the last few meetings, the only reference to the beer concession planned for the Van Wert County Regional Airport was in Law Director Greg Unterbrink’s report. Unterbrink included his legal opinion on the subject in his report, with Pastor Paul Hamrick, an outspoken critic of serving beer in public, requesting what Ohio Revised Code sections the law director used in compiling his opinion.