Next Step In Athletic Fields Project Approved At Town Meeting

Lynnfield Town Meeting voters approved $250,000 for design services on the athletic fields project Monday night, bringing the project another step closer to becoming reality. 

Voters adopted Article 7 by a 271-67 margin after a presentation for the fields proposal by Arthur Bourque, who temporarily yielded the moderator role to Richard O'Neil. Bourque, the chairman of the fields committee, noted that about 3,300 youth and adult athletes currently participate in a combined total of 5,681 organized athletic events per year, which has taken a heavy toll on the town's existing fields. 

Planning Board Chairman Richard Faria noted that his committee had voted to not recommend approval of this article, questioning whether the entire project was necessary at once and also saying the 2002 town master plan had seen the fields as a fairly low priority compared to other needs such as walking trails and library improvements. 

Selectman Tom Terranova gave his own presentation where he suggested allocating somewhat more than the proposed $250,000 in order to weigh whether the Reedy Meadow Golf Course could become a suitable alternative location for the fields as well as other town needs. Terranova also suggested the current fields committee could be combined with the town's upcoming capital needs planning committee and also spoke for doing the plan in phases. 

A year and a half ago, committee members began their work with an eye on developing a fields complex on a parcel of water district land not far from the Bostik Plant in Middleton. Various factors, including unsuitable land and the cost of an access road alone, led the committee to instead propose major upgrades to the current athletic fields at the high school and the middle school. 

With the $250,000 now approved for design services, the next major step in the fields project will come at the April 2014 town meeting, when Lynnfield voters are likely to consider an article seeking approval for the entire project.

The cost is expected to be about $5.66 million for the new fields at the high school, along with $785,000 for town-wide field improvements for a total of about $6.45 million - about $3.95 million of which will require financing for an estimated annual debt payment of $350,000. The plan calls for $200,000 of that annual amount to be covered by new MarketStreet Lynnfield revenues with the other $150,000 covered by the projected annual surplus in the town's golf enterprise fund. However, voters ended up rejecting article 8, which would have eliminated those enterprise funds next July 1, leaving that detail to be determined for now.