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Council Learns Oakview Field Renovation Cost Is Just $48,000

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Council Learns Oakview Field Renovation

Cost Is Just $48,000

By John Voket

Responding to Legislative Councilman Dan Amaral’s recent concerns, as well as rumors in the community about out-of-control spending for the project, town officials provided the full council with a detailed report on renovations to the Oakview playing field on Wasserman Way.

Parks and Recreation Director Amy Mangold said during the presentation that ten years ago, the town received a bid to perform similar renovations that are being completed by town crews today. That bid totaled more than $330,000.

But Parks Assistant Director Carl Samuelson confirmed that once the project is completed, the Oakview renovation will come in at or under a budget of $48,000 — with most of that cost being tied to leasing or renting special equipment required for the job.

Parks and Recreation Commission Chairman Ed Marks also noted that the final price for the soccer field’s upgrade will be about $20,000 less than his department budgeted for the work in 2010, adding however, that the renovation has been a goal of the commission for at least a dozen years. With the completion of the project, currently scheduled either this fall or next summer depending on whether the surface is sodded or seeded, local soccer squads will have a regulation-sized field to hold games or practices.

The field will also be big enough for two junior league games or practices to occur simultaneously, Mr Samuelson said. And opening up a new regulation field will result in more availability for local softball teams on another field at Fairfield Hills that is currently hosting regulation soccer matches.

As they spoke to the council Wednesday, Mr Samuelson said the project is about 50 percent complete.

The project is being completed through cooperative efforts of the parks staff as swell as public works crew members, and by sharing some of the equipment necessary to do specific jobs at the site.

Leasing A Screener

A multistage soil screener, large capacity loader, and mechanical roller have been leased or rented in the process, Mr Samuelson explained. He said when town equipment was being utilized, he worked closely with Public Works Director Fred Hurley to ensure the most suitable operators were also scheduled to work to maximize efficiency and economy.

To date, the project has generated a total $677 for 22 hours of overtime, primarily to avoid extending a lease on the multistage soil screener. If work with that unit was not completed on schedule, extending the lease would have cost the town $2,500.

Although the screener remained onsite for some time after its work was completed, that was because the company that owns it had not come to retrieve it from Newtown, Mr Samuelson said. He also explained that the town’s single-stage screener was not used because it would have taken three times as long to filter the three grades of soil required for the field’s foundation.

Taking longer to screen the soil with town equipment would have meant keeping a rented high capacity loader three times longer, at a much higher cost than leasing the multistage screening machine.

The rolling machine on site now is rented by the hour used, regardless of how long the unit is kept on site. And Mr Samuelson expects in the end, it will be used for about 20 to 25 hours.

When the first cleats hit the field sometime in 2013, Oakview will have 40 percent more capacity, with increased parking for at least 60 vehicles.

The location also served the town during the high school renovation as a holding area for fill soil removed from the site, and much of that fill was used to build up and expand the playing area, including 10,000 yards of prime topsoil. Mr Hurley said that every yard of topsoil conserved through reuse saved the town $20.

Building Skills, Morale

First Selectman Pat Llodra, who was attending and who instigated the presentation, said Oakview represents the “kind of project we normally would outsource during much, much better times.”

“Now, using staff who added this to their existing responsibilities, we have in-house talent to accomplish this project for $48,000,” Mrs Llodra said.

Mr Hurley and Mr Samuelson spoke to the morale boost projects of this scope bring to town workers, who can drive by a finished job years after its completion saying, “I built that.”

Mr Hurley also said the occasional project the size of Oakview also helps instill workers with more “adaptive, inventive problem-solving” skills.

Mr Marks also apologized to the council for not being as good a communicator as he should have been about progress on the field, but vowed that a new system of posting all parks project updates on the town website was in the offing.

Responding to a question from Mr Amaral about a $50,000 bulldozer the Parks Department purchased last year, Mr Samuelson said the machine, which already has 382 hours of use since its acquisition, has already saved the town more than $40,000 in rental fees versus a similar unit that would cost $70 per hour to rent.

“We thought it would take about five years for this bulldozer to pay for itself,” Mr Samuelson said. “But it looks like it will end up paying for itself in two to three years.”

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