Original proposal would cost city about $16,000 to fix, committee to discuss options further
By Kellen Olshefski
Editor
The City of Elkhorn Common Council took a hard look at a proposal to fix outfield drainage issues at the north baseball diamond in Elkhorn’s Sunset Park at its meeting Monday night.
The topic was originally brought to the city’s Municipal Services and Utilities Committee on Oct. 9. Chairman Greg Huss said Monday night Midwest Athletic Fields, who handled work on the fields earlier this year, is looking to fix a drainage issue in the field’s outfield that would cost more than $16,000.
Huss said the outfield is becoming flooded because of the drainage issue and the committee opted to send the topic back to Public Works Manager Martin Nuss to find out if Midwest Athletic Fields had completed work properly on the field in the first place and why the flooding is occurring.
“This is more discussion we need with Midwest on this one,” he said.
Nuss said Monday night the major concern is that water from the outfield is draining to the infield, keeping it wetter longer resulting in the field not being playable as quickly as the others.
“So, it’s not just the fact that the outfield holds water, but it gets to the infield and keeps the infield unplayable,” he said.
“It’s the whole outfield that’s creating an issue.”
Nuss said when Midwest Athletic Fields addressed the ball diamonds in Sunset Park, the outfields were not something that were addressed as part of the scope of work.
“That’s why this field, in particular continues to be a problem,” he said. “None of the other outfields were fixed.”
Furthermore, Nuss said the grade of the fields’ infields wasn’t changed, but simply the material was replaced with new material and that the height of each field hasn’t changed. As a result, Nuss said they would have changed the grade on the outfield for water to drain from the infield to the outfield to cause the problems they’re having, something that wasn’t done.
Nuss said the north field has had this problem for a couple of years because left field is a little more elevated than the rest of the field.
Nuss said the cost would fix the entire outfield, not just left field, starting from outside the fence and down to and towards the infield to alleviate the pooling water in the outfield.
Alderman Michael Kluck asked if the city already knew about this problem before they addressed the ball diamond’s infield, why the city continued with the infield without addressing the whole problem at the beginning.
Nuss said he wasn’t sure what was done with cost factors, but all fields were scheduled to be done the same with a focus on infields and fencing and no outfield work.
City Administrator Sam Tapson said when the city began to review this, Gary Welsh, then city engineer, told the city the elevations on the outfields were a problem and if the city were to tear out the outfield for repairs when it was discussed, they wouldn’t have been able to use the fields this summer.
“The decision was leave those outfields alone, just deal with the infields,” he said.
Mayor Brian Olson said as a witness of the flooding, he doesn’t think the city needs to spend $16,000 on the project to alleviate the issue.
“I think we need to be safe and look at some easier fixes versus just dumping another $16,000 into an outfield,” he said.
Nuss said the $16,000 would cover the entire outfield as well as outside of the fencing to keep water from draining into the infield, allowing it to dry like the other infields.
