Jenn Gilman's Edison Fields Project

In a recent letter, Town Council candidate Jenn Gilman was lauded, with the author asserting that she "would bring new energy to Ward 3 and to our town as a whole." If the Edison Fields Project, of which, as Chair of the Recreation Commission, she was a principal architect and major proponent, is an example of her energy, you can count me out.

That project, you may recall, involved carpeting more than six acres of the grass field behind Edison Intermediate School and alongside residential properties on three sides with artificial turf, and surrounding the area with stadium lights. That would have added two artificial turf playing fields to the extant three in town, and have been primarily for the benefit of private sports clubs and not Westfield school teams.

Artificial turf contains toxic “forever chemicals”, which have received much negative press lately, and has been shown to result in a higher incidence of injuries to athletes than natural grass. And the cost of Ms. Gilman’s project? An estimated $24 million over 30 years, taking into account initial cost, maintenance, and unavoidable periodic replacement and disposal.

Such was the Project’s value, safety snd service of broad community needs that it was voted down by a sizable majority of this town’s voters when extensive grass roots opposition triggered a legal requirement that the Project be put to referendum.

Robert Shire