Diamond Dispute: Baseball Teams Battle for Field Time
The West Geauga Sports Federation and the Knights Organization came to the Newbury Township Trustees meeting April 2 hoping for field use this spring and summer.
The West Geauga Sports Federation and the Knights Organization came to the Newbury Township Trustees meeting April 2 hoping for field use this spring and summer.
While there are five fields at the park, which is on the former Newbury Schools property on Auburn Road, only three of them are usable. The property belongs to West Geauga Schools, which absorbed the school district in 2020.
President of the Knights Organization, William Rivera, said he discussed a sublease for two of the fields last March, but it never went through.
“We spent $20,000 between the township and the Knights Organization for the two fields,” Rivera said.
The West Geauga Sports Federation also requested to use the field five days per week at the trustees meeting.
“It’s a public entity that we have to share and we can’t just keep people out,” he said. “We’re going to play like adults and we’re going to share, okay? That’s — that’s the way it’s going to be.”
Trustee Bill Skomrock provided the Knights with a contract to use two of the fields at the end of the meeting.
The other fields are in need of significant work, Rivera said, as trees are growing in one of the fields.
In other business, Skomrock said details for the bathroom project at Oberland Park are still being sorted out, as the minimum size for the water storage tank is 1,000 gallons and the proposed tank size is 140 gallons.
“For Geauga Public Health to approve the private water system application without a variance, the hauled water storage tank would need to be 1,000 gallons,” he said, adding there could be some alternatives to get around this.
“I wish I would have never done this in the long run, but I’m pretty stubborn,” he said. “Hopefully we can get this thing accomplished.”
The updated timeline is unknown.
