North Union’s school board is working on a roadmap for future maintenance of its sports fields and campus property.
At the board of education meeting on Monday, Field Source Consulting gave a presentation to the board with short and long term plans for maintaining the school’s sports fields and common areas.
“We wanted these fields to have a lifespan of easily 25 years before we’d have to do anything major to them again,” said Ryan DeMay, Principal of Field Source Ohio. “The way we do that is supporting them through maintenance.”
DeMay said that Field Source likes to assign levels to each area of school grounds based on priority of maintenance.
“Our level one is our highest level,” he said. “These are game fields and premier fields…the ones that have to be at their best all the time, no matter what kind of use they’re (going to) get.”
The level one area centers predominantly on the stadium field. DeMay said that a focus on maintaining the stadium field for supporting multiple sports is the main goal for the North Union School District.
DeMay said that level two areas receive more focus on player safety and playability rather than aesthetics, where maintenance will be pulled back during off seasons when the fields are not in use to save on cost and labor.
This level would include areas like the baseball and softball fields where maintenance would be ramped up come springtime, DeMay said. Other areas that classify as level two include the football and soccer practice fields.
Level three areas refer to the common areas that are not part of the sports fields, such as the front lawns of the school buildings, DeMay said. In these areas, the focus is mainly on presentation.
The track and field throwing area will also be included as a level two for this year.
“I think it will need additional weed control and over-seeding this year,” DeMay said. “It’s going to shift to a level three and be just fine but in this first full year (since) it was just seeded very late last year we don’t want to take a step back.”
As for maintenance costs, he said that for the sports fields, which would include levels one and two, it comes to around $50,000. He said costs could easily be reduced or expanded based on discussions with the finance committee.
“So if we say, from a contract service perspective, we don’t want to spend that amount of money on just general common areas, we’d prefer to take care of these specific areas,” DeMay said. “You’re able to leverage that and make better decisions financially going forward.”
He said that one of the main challenges is a lack of adequate equipment to take on all of the tasks for grounds management. One of the long-term goals is to get equipment on a needs basis and be able to do things in-house to save money on contracting.
“We spend a lot of money on maintenance, that’s something we pride ourselves in,” Board President Brian Davis said. “These are fields where for taxpayers, they’ve invested in our kids and invested in our community. I think it’s our job to take care of that investment.”