A project to upgrade Islamorada’s Founders Park baseball field still hasn’t reached home base with differences over an agreement between the village and Monroe County School District. It could be hashed out, however, in a rare joint meeting between the two governing bodies.
At a July 7 meeting, village council members voted unanimously to request school board members to sit down with them to work through some questions and concerns each side has relayed to their respective attorneys and leaders in the last months. Draft agreements have bounced back and forth between the council and school board with new changes being proposed. Questions and differences have swirled around cost of maintenance, warranties and language for early termination, to name a few.
The school district is seeking to spend $3.8 million on the village property at Founders Park to install a new artificial surface on the field. The project also includes new fencing and dugouts. Keysstar Construction has been selected as the contractor for the improvement work. Founders Park baseball field has been the home of Coral Shores High School baseball.
Village council members are hoping to meet with school board members before one of the school board’s upcoming meetings on July 21 in Marathon or July 28 in Key West. Schools Superintendent Ed Tierney told Keys Weekly the school district and board are open to the potential of a joint meeting and are currently working through some logistics and legal aspects to ensure it can happen.
The joint meeting is something the village council has requested for months.
“I think we are so close and I think the entire problem is because we haven’t been discussing it with the school board,” Mayor Don Horton said during the July 7 meeting.
School board member Mindy Conn has also requested a joint meeting to sort through the differences.
“It needs to be in the Sunshine, the discussion between the board and village needs to happen so everybody can hear what everybody’s saying,” Conn said at the school board’s June 23 meeting.
Some questions over maintenance were cleared up by Pat Lefere, county school district executive director of operations, during the July 7 meeting. In moving to an artificial surface, he said, the cost would be $6,000 a year, down from the roughly $48,000 a year to maintain a natural grass field.
There were new questions for Village Attorney John Quick on changes the school board made with its attorney on items previously agreed to by both sides. For instance, Quick said, the sides agreed that a written notice to terminate the agreement would take effect three years from the date it was filed. Quick said the latest proposal from the school board pushed it to five years.
School board member Sue Woltanski, who attended the council meeting, said the school district would need more time to find a home for the high school baseball program.
“It’s become clear to us there’s no way to have a baseball field in the backyard of Coral Shores and have tennis courts and practice fields,” Woltanski explained. “If we were to lose the field here, we would have to restructure not just to accommodate the baseball field, we’d have to restructure every outdoor sport.”
Tierney told Keys Weekly he’s hopeful an agreement will get worked out.
“There’s been a lot of back and forth, but that just shows the passion on both sides,” he said. The fact that all sides are agreeing to a joint meeting indicates how they would like to get something done.”
