While the recreation facilities have been a point of constant conversation in town these past several months, you don’t often hear talk of the actual user groups involved. Sure, actions of a few Clippers executives have caused the occasional stir, but what of the other groups affected?
The original Steering Committee met with 17 stakeholder groups in conducting its study. In no particular order, their reported numbers were:
Curling Club – approx membership 475
Slo Pitch – approx membership 474
Minor Hockey – approx membership 411
Skating Club – approx membership 173
Minor Baseball – approx membership 117
Lawn Bowling – approx membership 65
Collingwood Clippers – No number in the report (perhaps 75-90 at the time)
Minor Hockey and the Skating Club, will benefit from a new rink. The Clipper will benefit with a new, customised pool. Curling and Lawn Bowling remain unchanged. (I would love to hear from any of these groups with updated numbers). Even soccer must benefit from the town’s purchase of Fisher Field.
Let’s do some simple math. Total users at the time was 1,790. Of that, the Clippers represent 2% of the user population, and they got the benefit of $583,976 in upgrades to the pool facility which is costing over $4 million. The ball players represent 33% of the user pop and they lost a diamond and are getting no new facility for their user group.
In terms of recommendations affecting local baseball, the Steering Committee was adamant that all user groups be accommodated and, if relocation was necessary, that the group have new facilities that would be up and running at the same time so that no user group would be displaced or disadvantaged by the recreation development. In this vein, the Committee recommended, “ That staff develop a plan for relocating the existing ball diamonds based on feedback from the slo-pitch and minor ball representatives”. The committee also set aside $1.2 million to pay for the relocation of 4 ball diamonds.
Under the existing plan, the Town has removed one ball diamond which was used by both minor ball and slo-pitch with no plans for any new diamond.
Now that the town is re-routing the traffic and entrance, there is talk of putting up meshing to catch the home runs and protect the cars and pedestrians. They are claiming it is $100,000 more, but I think we all know how accurate their estimates really are.
Here is a letter (printed with permission) from the President of the Collingwood Minor Baseball Association, to the town, expressing its concerns.
Members of Council,
I am writing on behalf of the Collingwood Minor Baseball Association to convey our wishes for this year’s budget.
As you are well aware we lost a baseball diamond in 2012 with the removal of Diamond #2 at Central Park. This diamonds importance to our program has not been properly explained to council in our opinion. Diamond #2 was used by our Rally cap team, (ages 4-7), our Jr. Rookie team, (ages 6-8), our Sr. Rookie team, (ages7-9), our tyke Team, (ages10-11), and was used for our Peewee tournament. (It was also used by Special Olympics and the slow pitch league). This impacts over 75 children under the age of 11 who used this facility.
We have been meeting with Parks and Rec. staff in the fall and throughout the winter months to try and come up with suitable arrangements to accommodate these teams at our other heavily used baseball diamonds. We will be able to “make due” this season but you should be aware that we have had to shelve our plan to re-introduce a Junior Team Ages 19-21, simply because we do not have adequate diamond space for them to play.
As I write this letter, our Rookies teams are already full for the 2013 season and there is a waiting list for second teams for both jr. and sr. rookie. I am not sure we will be able to accommodate the second team(s) for theses age groups, which could mean that we turn away children from our program. We have worked very hard over the last few years to turn our program around, and the loss of this ball park has been devastating.
We are aware of the long term plans for Heritage Park and we are very supportive of this initiative. You are also aware that we applied to the Toronto Blue jays Field of Dreams fund which could have resulted in $150,000 in funding for the re-development of Heritage Park. Our application was supported not only by our organization, but the Collingwood Rotary Club, and the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit, as well as our Parks and Rec. dept. It was very well received by the Blue jays Organization, but ultimately we were not accepted primarily because the Town of Collingwood had committed $0.00 to this re-development. I would like to re-apply to this fund next year, but we need a commitment from Collingwood that there will be money put towards this park.
It is vital that we replace the lost diamond just to keep our programs at the level they are today, let alone the growth that we would like to achieve. We will make due for this season, but it is not ideal, the larger diamonds at legion and Heritage are not designed for our teams below peewee as the fencing, and backstop are too far away, and the infield is too large. We need a diamond designed for the younger players. We need the second diamond at heritage. We need this diamond today, not next year, or the year after.
We want to see some monies put towards starting this project this year. We have committed as an association $2000.00 this spring, and are hopeful that we will have an additional $2000.00 to commit to this project after our season. We feel that this diamond could easily be built this year for use for our 2014 season. We could accomplish this by phasing in the heritage park plan, and our association is more than prepared to raise addition funds, as well as provide volunteer labour to build the infield, and outfield which would result in significant savings. I will not get into all the details, but we feel that building the smaller diamond for use by 2014 is very achievable. There has been no major baseball infrastructure spending by the town of Collingwood in over 30 years!
Collingwood has a long history of very competitive baseball teams going back to the 1930’s, and this year we are entering a Bantam team in the competitive SOBA league, with hopes of more teams next year but we need your help in ensuring the children of Collingwood not only have the opportunity to play baseball, but that they get the needed physical activity that is missing in so many of our children today.
Thank you,
Joseph Macdonald
President
Collingwood Minor Baseball Association
What email would be complete, without a response from our Mayor?. Here is what Joe received.
.
Thank you for providing your comments and update for Mnor Baseball. The appropriate staff have been provided your comments for future consideration.
I appreciate your efforts for the youth of our community.
Sandra Cooper
I followed up with Joe, and he stressed these additional points.
– the current construction is affecting the ball diamonds, no parking, dirt dust, noise.
– the road around the diamond is ridiculous, dust dirt, car damage etc.
– So far I cannot get any of the simple maintenance issues dealt with.
– We hosted a peewee tournament in July last year, and were able to run the entire tournament in one spot. This year, will need to use multiple areas to get it done.
– We have 11 teams playing in league play, one of those is playing in an elite division, and then we have close to 50 tball kids playing in Collingwood only. 2 coaches per team.
– We have enough space for the games we need to play this year, we have no space for the more important practises for all the teams.
– The slow pitch league is also very big, 600 plus adults, See Slow Pitch
No, this doesn’t seem remotely fair to me either.
Cheers
Steve
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