Resident raises concerns about practice baseball fields

By MICHAEL CRIMMINS
Glasgow News 1

Traditionally the Barren County Fiscal Court Parks and Recreation Committee meets on the Monday before the full fiscal court, which is in the court chambers monthly on the third Tuesday, but one of the three magistrates — the chairman of the committee — failed to appear resulting in a lack of a quorum. Nevertheless, Barren County Judge-Executive Jamie Bewley Byrd, magistrates Brad Groce and Tim Durham, and Deputy County Judge-Executive Garland Giliam sat around the conference room table and listened to the concerns of Toby Pentecost, a longtime Glaswegian, past assistant youth league coach and a parent of two children who are, and will be, in the county league.

Pentecost said he had no affiliation with any specific group, but he came to the meeting after he was told he was unable to take a group of children to Gorin Park to practice and therefore had to instead go to the fields at Eastern Elementary.

“We show up and Eastern’s fields are terrible; they just absolutely are,” Pentecost said. “Grass patches all through the infield, bases that are no longer attached to the ground and so practice really turned into us going through scenarios and talking through some things and it wasn’t much more than a warm up.”

Pentecost said due to the condition he was unable to practice for fear of injuries.

“It’s one thing to get hurt because of an accident. Anyone here who did sports has probably been hurt at some point in the time they played, but when they get hurt because neglect then that’s a different ball game,” Pentecost said “We’re talking about 5 to 12 year olds who really can’t do anything about it so we as adults have to be the ones to provide that safe environment for them.”

Chris Jennings, the parks and recreation director at Barren County Fiscal Court, admitted that this issue was not confined to Eastern’s fields, but other practice fields as well. According to him fields two and three at Red Cross Elementary have been closed citing safety concerns and drainage issues.

According to Jennings this leaves roughly three fields available for practice that must be split between the 46 teams that are part of fall baseball and softball — Gorin Park is being used for city football and Beaver Trail Park is being used for soccer.

“You’re doing a great job at Jackie Browning; those fields are ready to play every time we come out there,” Pentecost said. “The issue is not Jackie Browning, the issue is we can’t practice at Jackie Browning because we’re playing games there.”

“We don’t need practice fields to look like Jackie Browning [Park], we just need spaces that look like baseball fields,” Pentecost added.

Groce explained that the fields at Red Cross were built backwards that causes water to drain to the infield rather than the outfield, as is normal, because of this it would require major repairs to fix the issue that require a “bandaid” every year. Byrd said the estimate she saw the renovations was roughly $35,000.

Durham, who is a magistrate for the counties third district, said the hesitation comes from the fields not being located on county land, but being on Barren County Schools property.

“We’ve discussed this multiple times,” Durham said. “You’re dealing with the school’s property, it’s not county property.”

“It’s hard to spend money on someone else’s property. We’ve been meeting since January to try and address some of these issues…”Jennings added.

During the previous county administration, Byrd said, a contract between the county and schools was made that said the schools would retain the property while the county would use it and maintain it. Magistrates Groce and Durham along with Jennings and Byrd said they have not read the contract in-depth and never got clear on the specifics.

“I don’t think we’ve ever got a clear explanation of this contract that the last administration signed with the county school system,” Jennings said. “From what I’ve heard we’re allowed to use the facilities and we would maintain them.”

Pentecost asked what needed to be done to fix the fields, whether it’s manpower or money, and he also told the group that the parents would likely help with the smaller purchases like a new set of bases or the maintenance like mowing or weeding.

At the end of the roughly hour-long discussion, the group, after thanking Pentecost for being the only member of the public to come and express concerns, agreed there were problems that needed to be fixed, but more clarification on the agreement was needed.

“What I think needs to happen is we need to sit down with Bo [Matthews, Barren County Schools superintendent] and Anthony [Frazier, director of pupil personnel] and get a plan together for these fields,” Byrd said. “We need to get that figured out so we can get them to practice level and can figure out who’s responsible for them.”

“It’s a partnership. We’ll do our part but they’re going to have to do theirs,” Durham added.