Tally the baseball field cost

[Guest]

[Jay T.]

The data does include the costs paid for from inception to now. It is not just those covered by the grants. I wanted to state the grants in the interest of full disclosure, not to justify spending or any other reason. Not doing so would leave me open to criticsim from those who support the field and say I am only presenting one side of the coin.

I asked for costs incurred, approved and paid for by the town. The allowances show budgeted money and invoices paid. The budgets approved have been met. So change orders have to be processed from now until Phase II is bid out. Thus the addiitonal 20,000 for the fence.

If they should decide tomorrow to scrap the plan for the ballfield then this will be our sole cost.

It does not include future costs because those have not yet been bid out. So while they will be major, no one can say for certain how high they will be. My guess is that they'll likely be at least another 200,000. But, that's all it is.

It does not include the land because regardless of the ballfield the land would have still been acquired.

To be very clear, the costs came from the the township office not the TC members or any other source. These individuals are very open and honest people who have no interest in hiding costs from the residents in our town. To insinute otherwise is pretty offensive to them and to me as I took time from my schedule to do this research today.

As I said they were very friendly and helpful as they provided me the documents within one day when legally it could have taken 7 days.

As I have posted numerous times, I feel the costs of the ballfield are unnecessary and out of line with what our town's needs are at the moment. I agree that grant money still is our money unless it came from private grants from companies or charities (it did not).

[Guest]

[Guest]

[Jay T.]

I don't have the history, but here is what I understand from multiple sources. Please forgive me if I am a bit off here or there as I did not take notes in my discussions.

The Finance Department told me to the best of my recollection that the largest grant of 400,000 was intended to for the use of dugouts, scoreboard, restroom facilities, etc... I do not recall what they said the additional 75,000 grant was intended to be used for. This was spelled out in a letter to the town.

The project was bid out in two phases, I am not sure why this was done perhaps because of different vendor requirements or because they may have wanted to apply for a second grant. I do not know.

The first phase I understand was field grading, fencing, lay out.

The second phase was dugout, scoreboard, bleachers, restroom facilities, etc...

The remediation money had to come into play in the first phase in order to do grading and the build out. Whether it was grant money used or town money I don't think is material. It's akin to paying a bill from your savings account or checking either way it comes out of the same pool of money in the town's possesion and either way it increases the cost of the field.

[Jay T.]

Sorry, the remediation increased the costs by 100,873.00.

Either way, remember the Phase 2 building is still to be bid. So this field is not going to come in cheaply.

BTW, there are 3 pages of line item invoices on the printout of charges.