By MICHAEL CRIMMINS
Glasgow News 1
Barren County Judge-Executive Jamie Bewley Byrd said she would sit down with Barren County Schools Superintendent Bo Matthews and Director of Pupil Personnel Anthony Frazier to reevaluate their agreement regarding use and upkeep of the baseball practice fields sometime in November.
This need for reevaluation came to the forefront after a parent, and former assistant coach in the county’s youth baseball program, Toby Pentecost, came to the Monday meeting of the Parks and Recreation committee to express some of his concerns with the practice fields and explore possible solutions. His main issue concerned the state of the fields, according to him there are “grass patches throughout the infield” and bases that are not secured to the ground.
“We show up and Eastern [Elementary’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.”
Over the course of the hour discussion Barren County Magistrate Tim Durham along with the other present, said, while there was an issue with the fields, he was hesitant to approve the spending needed because the fields are not on county land but rather on Barren County School property. For example, to renovate Red Cross Elementary’s field would be roughly $35,000, Byrd said during the discussion.
“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…” Chris Jennings, county parks and recreation director, added.
Also during the meeting Chris Jennings along with Byrd and the magistrates said the school-county contract, which was signed during former Judge-Executive Micheal Hale’s administration, was never fully evaluated since Hale did very little with the fields after the contract was established.
Matthews said the contract was created to address an issue throughout the county created when the youth leagues at each individual school consolidated into the current league that used Jackie Browning Park as its “hub.” Over the league’s existence they realized there wasn’t much room at the park since there were games there and so turned to the fields already built at the schools. According to the nonexclusive lease, initialed and signed by both Hale and Matthews, the fields in question are located at North Jackson, Red Cross and Eastern elementaries.
The original lease was signed in October 2018 for a one year duration at the price of $1. The lease was again signed in May 2022 with the 12 month term beginning on the first day of March.
“I know we’re talking about another county judge, other magistrates, but I would think that some of the magistrates might have overlapped when we entered into this agreement,” Matthews said.
A look through the Barren County Fiscal Court minutes reveal that there was discussion of the lease during the May 17, 2022 meeting with former Magistrate Trent Riddle making a motion to “enter into a lease agreement with Barren County Board of Education” and current Magistrate Jeff Botts providing the second before it was passed unanimously. A similar search of the 2018 minutes found no such reference.
According to Matthews the specifics of the nonexclusive lease have not changed since its initial creation and he disagrees with the comments made in the Oct. 16 meeting saying it’s “pretty clear” who is responsible for what.
The lease agreement states that the board of education will be responsible for utility costs and “all maintenance required to the premises, including, but not limited to, maintenance of the roof, exterior walls, heating and air conditioning, plumbing, electrical and sewage systems shall be in the sole discretion of the [Board].” While the county is responsible for “clean-up maintenance following the use of the premises for practices and games” and shall “continue mowing the grass and assisting with field maintenance [and] they shall be responsible for costs and responsible for maintenance and upkeep of fields for acceptable playing conditions.”
The lease also includes other items such as the operation and profits from the gate and concession sales, the premises inspection, the restrictions of the premises’ use and the landlord-tenant relationship created. The entirety of the lease spans six pages and contains 28 sections. Matthews also expressed the need to have a meeting to clarify each party’s responsibilities.
“We need to get people who are new to the scene, who weren’t on the court in 202[2], to have a clear understanding of the past and chart a course forward,” Matthews said. “We’re wanting to be good neighbors and do our part”
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