The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
City rejects proposal to use teen center building
TORRINGTON — A Harwinton couple is looking to use the city’s teen center building as a community center and some evening activities, but are being met with resistance from the city, which says the property is only for its own use.
Mark and Holly Dailey, who also own property in the city, they said, approached the city last year with the proposal, which included cleaning up and repairing the building, no strings attached, Mark Dailey said.
“There are spaces there for all kinds of things,” Holly Dailey said.
As part of their effort to use the space, the Daileys said a local church is willing to help accomplish their goal of using the space by renting it to hold Sunday services.
“(The Daileys) went to the Recreation Commission and presented their idea to members. ... Then, I met with them with Mayor Carbone,” Recreation Director Brett Simmons said. “They had some different proposals. But it’s a recreation building, and it’s set up and
maintained for recreation functions.”
The Recreation Commission oversees the use of the building.
Sherry Grech, a subcontractor for the recreation department, uses the teen center building on East Albert Street for dance and fitness classes, and Jack McArdle’s Irish Step Dancing also holds its classes there. Both are offered through the recreation department.
“We use subcontractors to provide services for many of the activities offered by the department,” Simmons said. “The (teen center) building serves two functions; a teen center downstairs, and the dance and gymnastics programs upstairs, and also Jack McArdle’s Irish step dancing . ... We use subcontractors because we don’t have a lot of staff on hand to facilitate them.”
Simmons said the teen center this year also may serve as a rain location for summer programs.
He said the Parks and Recreation Department and the Recreation Commission are always open to new ideas for programming.
“We’re not closing the door to different ideas, and we always look for ways to provide more program options for people,” he said. “But the building is for recreation use. We’re not entertaining long-term commitments for other types of uses.”
The Daileys said Thrive Church has offered to pay $1,200 per month to use the teen center building for its Sunday services. The couple set up a Facebook page and conducted a poll, and more than 200 people supported the idea.
Ballfield fees
The Daileys pointed out that the city’s recent decision to charge a fee for softball leagues and Little League teams to use the municipal ball fields has many people upset, and that the church’s offer could provide needed funding for the fields.
Simmons said the city’s ongoing budget constraints prompted his department’s decision to charge a fee to the leagues this year.
“We want to have highquality ballfields for our many teams, and we need to offset our maintenance needs to provide what they always expect,” he said. “We were taken back by the response from people, but we’re working with organizations to make this work.”
The city provides playing fields for between 12 and 14 leagues, each which has between two and eight teams, Simmons said. He explained that the maintenance of the fields is a fulltime summer job for staff.
“There’s a lot to do,” he said. “Turf maintenance, fertilizer, mowing, dragging the infield clay area, painting lines, fixing the wear and tear to the pitching mounds and home plate areas. The benches have to be painted and maintained. Some of the fields have structures that need to be maintained. There are lighting systems. There’s a lot that goes into it. It’s been on the city to maintain the fields at no charge, but we can’t continue to do that.”
In some cases, teams using the fields help with maintenance, but Simmons said that’s not the case in Torrington.
“Finding volunteers for more than coaching, to deal with the maintenance with consistency, would put a strain on the teams,” he said. “We have staff that are trained to do that, and are scheduled to do what needs to be done. That’s why we have the fields that we do, and why people enjoy using them.”
Take the money
The Daileys don’t understand why the city wouldn’t welcome the funding to supplement something like ballfield maintenance.
“We’re baffled and kind of annoyed at the city making it more difficult for people to use the facilities,” Holly Dailey said. “It doesn’t seem like they should do it this way; the city could have taken the $1,200 a month from us, and put it toward using the fields, so people wouldn’t have to pay that extra money.”
Carbone told the Daileys they could do popup events at the teen center, but that a permanent arrangement wasn’t possible.
Mark Dailey wants the Recreation Commission to reconsider the group’s proposal.
“We believe that the residents would overwhelmingly support a community center utilizing the (teen center) building,” he said. “If we are correct in our assumption, what recourse do they have if the (Parks and Recreation Department and Recreation Commission) refuse to give ear to them?”