More Baseball Fields

As a rapid Baseball fan and someone who played in seemingly thousands of games (pickup and organized) as a youth growing up in Ridgewood in the 1960s and 70s, it would seem to be logical for me to support the proposal to develop the Village's Shedler property near Route 17 for ball fields and walking paths.

Though in light of constrained budgets, decreasing levels of services, and the expectation of further tax increases I can only agree with the mayor. According to the Ridgewood Patch:

"Mayor Killion says village services should be restored, infrastructure improved before considering development of fields, which he says were never promised."

Schedler, a 7-acre property off Route 17 the Village purchased with bonds totaling $2 million with the inclusion of a recent grant, is earmarked to become a passive park.  Though even a passive park requires its grass to be regularly cut, its baseball diamond raked, its trash cans to be emptied, and its environs patrolled by the police. This all costs money as anyone will tell you.

My greatest for concern for my old home town is that unless new sources of tax and general revenue income can be developed, this latest field might very well end up like the ball fields at Willard School I played on as a youth: filled with weeds, trash, and  clay infields which couldn't absorb even a normal rain fall.

I only hope the Village Council considers some new ideas for increasing the Village coffers. Whether it is Cell Phone Towers, Advertising on Village property, or programs to decrease costs like the one developed by RHS Students for Environmental Action Club which has saved taxpayers thousands of dollars by regularly turning off classroom lights at RHS on Friday afternoons.