City Council awaits cost of relocating school football field

WOONSOCKET – The City Council got an update on continuing improvements at Cass Park from Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt’s administration Tuesday evening, but still wants a cost figure on one of the biggest aspects of the plan, the possible relocation of the high school football field there at some point in the future.

Baldelli-Hunt and Joel D. Mathews, city director of planning and development, laid out the award of two Department of Environmental Management recreational development grants that have been received for the Cass Park project, one for $388,000 used for work last year and this year, and a recently awarded grant of $375,000 for which projects are still being planned.

In addition to the state funding, the city has been contributing “in kind work” on park projects by public works employees for an approximate 20 percent city match in the grant awards.

Gendron, who had added the park plan update to the council’s work session agenda, said the council was looking for an overall rundown of the costs of the improvements, including the city’s contributions, so as to weigh their full impact on the budget.

“Even though it is an ‘in kind’ contribution, it is still taxpayer funding,” Gendron said. Although city parks or highway department workers may do some of the work included in the park improvements, Gendron said they are still being paid by the city and that can be a specific cost. “When they are working in the park, they are not available to work somewhere else,” he explained.

Gendron said the council will be looking at those costs again when it reviews the public works department’s budget requests for the coming year.

The administration also presented the council with a rendering of the park plan and the improvements that have already been carried out, such as the relocation of the basketball courts and reconstruction of the Cass Pond parking area and walking path.

The new grant will be used to complete work on the already started construction of a regulation girls softball field where the park’s old Little League field had been located, the installation of a new playground/activity area for older youth, and possibly the construction of a new walking bridge near the softball field where a deteriorated bridge has been removed.

The only other cost the council needs, Gendron said, is a figure on the possible relocation of the football field.

Gendron said he has heard many people support the planned relocation over the years, and he too would support such a move. The question remains, however, as to what such a project would cost.

“They said they would get that to us,” Gendron noted.

City Councilwoman Melissa Murray said she believes the city’s employees have already done “a stellar job” on improving Cass with the projects already done. “I think it give us a very big return on investment as far as the work being done by the members of our public works department,” she said.

City Councilman Richard Fagnant said that the city’s long term plan for the park had originally included between $3.5 million to $3.8 million in projects and that to date, the city has received about $700,000 of that needed funding through state grant awards. The proposal for the football field, he noted, was described as a project that would not be done with the current award of funding and would only be considered further down the road when more funding is secured.

The council also worked on a proposed zoning ordinance change now before the panel that would allow the development of an indoor grow operation at a 240,000-square-foot mill on Singleton Street. No action is voted at work sessions of the council.