By Alexandrea Dahlstrom
Correspondent
The Williams Bay School Board of Education voted in favor of the construction of a new baseball field at its meeting Monday night.
It was more than seven years ago that the Williams Bay School Board was approached about constructing a new baseball field. Each year the issue would come up and each year it sat on the bench.
At Monday’s meeting, it was determined the cost of the field is not to exceed $456,714, though district funds available for the field are $365,000. The Board voted in favor of obtaining the remaining $100,000 from Fund 80, which District Administrator Wayne Anderson said is the District’s Community Service Fund, a savings account to be used for supporting activities not just for the Williams Bay School District, but also for the community of Williams Bay. As a result, other Williams Bay programs and teams will have access to the field.
With the construction of the new elementary school, the Board members said Monday they thought this was a good time to also include the baseball field.
District Administrator Wayne Anderson said when he came to the school district, he was informed the community had put aside slightly less than $400,000 for the construction of a new baseball field at the current Junior/Senior High School. He said the boys currently play all of their home baseball games at the field on Theatre Road.
“Last year, the Board started working on making this new baseball field a reality,” Anderson said.
H&K Sportsfields were hired to draw up the specifications for the new field and help prepare bid documents for the field’s construction, according to Anderson, and engineering firm Kapur & Associates was hired to assist the Board in creating a master plan for the 80-acre site.
Once the design of the field was completed, sent out to construction firms for bids, of which Anderson said the district received two bids. However, he said the bids to construct the baseball field were much higher than the amount of money the district had to spend, with one bid coming in around $625,000 and a second came at about $725,000.
The new baseball field being a priority for the district, Anderson said in a recent blog post Mike Parent from H&K Sportsfields met with Board members, administrators, coaches and community members to review specifications and determine what changes could be made to bring the cost closer to funds the district has available.
According to Anderson the district has been working with Scherrer Construction on the design of the field, not only because of their past building experience, but also because of their ability to reduce the cost of the project, as they will already have their workers and equipment on site for construction of the district’s new elementary school.
Williams Bay School District Athletic Director Mike Coolidge said Monday he was thankful of both the board and the community for their support in building the new field.
Groundbreaking for the new field will happen in May.
For more news from the School Board meeting, see the April 17 edition of The Times.
