October 10, 2008
by Christine Yeres and Ann Marie Fallon
This Tuesday, October 14, at its regular meeting at Horace Greeley High School starting at 8:45 p.m., the school board will hear public comment for and against a proposal by a group of New Castle parents to raise money privately to replace the Horace Greeley High School grass competition field with synthetic turf. [See “Turf topic raised again for Greeley field,” NewCastleNow.org, August 22, 2008.] New Castle residents Randy Katchis, Larry Grob, Jeff Scheine, Ken French, Wendy Scherl, Morgan Rutman and Beth Leventhal are some of the organizers behind the proposal.
“We have stepped forward to address the severe shortage of quality athletic fields in New Castle,” explained Larry Grob. “New Castle is behind the times. We’re one of the few remaining towns without a synthetic turf field. Fields are being destroyed by overuse, and securing field space in poor weather conditions is a major problem.”
“I understand,” said school board member Susan Haberman, “that a lot of people feel that not having turf compromises our athletic program. Another pressure is that everyone else has a turf field. This isn’t being done just for looks; the push is out there because a lot of people want to involve more kids in sports.”
History of turf discussions in New Castle
Turf discussions have begun and fizzled at least twice before in New Castle. When NewCastleNOW.org reported last spring that an outside company had approached the New Castle Parks & Recreation Commission with a proposal to construct a turf field and protective bubble at the upper Gedney soccer field, a flurry of letters came in response. The writers were passionately for or against the proposal. Some were opposed to the use of public park space by a private company; some believed a turf field to be the best answer to an acute shortage of field space; others, citing cases of synthetic field removal in New Jersey, believed synthetic turf to be dangerous. The Gedney proposal was dropped, mainly, according to town administrator Jerry Faiella, because the access driveway to the upper Gedney field is too steep.
First attempt by private fund raisers peters out
Prior to the Upper Gedney proposal, the school board gave the go-ahead to a parent group to explore the option of funding turf for the competition field and maybe even the high school fields alongside the senior parking lot. This effort languished partially because the parents’ proposal included lighting for the competition field to allow night games. Neighbors to the south of the competition field objected to the lights.
The possibility of an artificial turf field surfaced again over this past summer, when this new group of parents approached the school board. A turf field, suggested Katchis, is “a matter of getting a little balance into the system of about 30 grass fields, to serve a growing student population as well as the community.”
In a discussion during their August 19 meeting, members of the school board expressed interested in the turf offer, although they were unsure about whether they could legally accept such a gift. The Board expects to have an answer to this threshold question by Tuesday’s meeting. Board members emphasized that only one field—the competition field—is under consideration for turf and that there will be no discussion of lighting the field.
New Castle superintendent of recreation and parks gathers research
The group of parents spearheading the fund-raising proposal asked Bob Snyder, New Castle’s superintendent of recreation and parks, to investigate what comparable Westchester school districts have to say about their turf fields. Snyder consulted Ossining, White Plains, Dobbs Ferry, Lakeland, Valhalla, New Rochelle, John Jay, Harrison, Bronxville and Scarsdale.
Snyder has collected information for the school board on what materials synthetic turf fields are made of now, how they are constructed, what they cost, how they hold up and how much more playing time they yield. The parent committee and board members also wanted to learn whether the health risks – infection from or ingestion or inhalation of particulates—posed by earlier generations of synthetic turf had been overcome in the most recent versions of it, as well as whether more players are injured on turf than on grass and what kinds of injuries are associated with each. The parents plan to present this information at the October 14 meeting.
Less play in hot weather; more play in colder weather
Turf gets hotter than grass, cutting down on field use in summer at peak heat times, sometimes requiring, ironically, hydration, or watering, to cool it. But during transition seasons, turf buys more time: players can use it longer in autumn and begin play earlier in spring, plus gain some use of turf even in winter. Proponents argue that synthetic turf will keep New Castle athletes competitive with players in other towns who practice on turf.
The comparable finances of turf and grass fields
Figures of the first parent group for creation of a turf competition field ran between $1 million and $1.5 million. Research materials assembled by Snyder show a rough cost comparison between turf and grass. Initial construction cost of a turf field runs $600,000, first-year maintenance is $3,500, and ten years of maintenance is $40,000, totaling $643,500. The initial construction cost of a soil-based field is $50,000, first-year maintenance is $15,000 and ten years of maintenance is $172,000, totaling $237,000.
The school board has made it clear that – especially now, given the grim economic picture – the substantial up-front expense of turf is not one they are willing to put on the taxpayers’ tab. That leaves the private fund-raising approach. If the board were to approve this course of action, it would have to decide whether to require that the gift include the cost of maintenance for the ten or so years of the turf’s lifetime and/or replacement cost at the end of that term. While year-to-year costs of turf are less than the cost of maintaining grass fields turf does eventually need replacing, ususally after ten or 12 years.
In Bronxville, money for a turf field was raised through that town’s non-profit education fund and included extra for cost overruns. Since there were no overruns, the extra funds will go toward maintenance. Scarsdale set up a separate not-for-profit fund for the actual cost of the synthetic turf field construction. In Darien, Connecticut, residents voluntarily wrote checks directly to the school district.
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Copyright 2008 NewCastleNOW.org