The Crookston Board of Parks and Recreations met in the City Hall Conference Room on Monday afternoon for a regular meeting. After the Call of Order, the board began the meeting by approving the minutes from their last meeting on January 17, which they approved unanimously.
REGULAR AGENDA
The board began discussing plans for the Summer Youth Baseball & Softball League. Park and Rec Director Jake Solberg shared they would join the Northwest Border League as the teams had to drive quite far for games against teams in the north.
“It’s a new league this year, which involves our surrounding area towns. They’re going to offer baseball for 9, 10, 11, 12-year-olds, and 13-15-year-olds. They’re a flexible league, so they want to have games on Tuesdays and Thursdays for certain age groups and will allow a little less traveling, too,” Solberg explained. “You can travel to Thief River or a town up north to Warroad and Roseau, you go up there once, and then next year, they’ll come here. It’s a league designed to have more flexibility but still has some competition for kids who want to play ball.”
Solberg plans to meet with the league on April 22 to plan the schedule for the season and open registration from April 10 until May 19, with them allowing late registrations from May 20-26 with a $50 late fee until May 27 and the season beginning on June 1.
For the Youth softball, fast pitch girl’s league that had joined the Pony League last year. The board believed last year’s collaboration with the league was a great success and was looking to continue being a part of the league with the addition of adding the 8-10 leagues.
Youth Softball & Baseball Donation
The board discussed three donations they had received from the Crookston Baseball Association last week for their various baseball and softball leagues.
“We had a meeting last week with the Baseball Association. I’ve been looking into getting new uniforms for our 12U and 10U Babe Ruth and 14U, 12U, 10U, and 8U fast-pitch kids. I talked to the Baseball Association, and they’re going to pitch in $10,000 towards new uniforms for our youth program,” said Solberg. “They also said they would pitch in $10,000 for operational costs, whether that’s paying umpires, coaches, or getting new bats, helmets, or catcher’s gear. Things that you need for your program. Then, they will provide all the money for the American Legion Baseball program. They donated $26,500 for operational costs on that, and the officials this summer for their Legion games.”
Musco Lighting
Solberg informed the board of an update on their deal with Musco Lighting on the lights fixtures in Karn Field.
“Last year, they had put in new fixtures and lighting at our Karn Field complex. During that process, they found out there were some different things wrong with the harnesses they needed to add to certain light poles out there. It was not involved in the original proposal. This was a problem that they found. So, I got a proposal and quote back from them for these new harnesses, which they will put in either in the spring or summer whenever they get out there. They’re about four weeks out, but with the weather and snow, we don’t know when they’ll get out there. It’s a problem they found and offered to fix, and the Baseball Association would like to purchase these. Once these are all fixed, we should go to about 90% light coverage to our field, and we’re currently at 50%.”
They also suggested plans to readjust the lighting to brighten the bullpen areas. These changes and purchases came in for a total of $5,250.
Hockey Tournaments
Solberg then gave his thoughts on the 15U A Olympic Regional Girls Hockey and Squirt A District tournaments, saying he believed they all ran well with the volunteers and had many intense hockey games, with six of the nine Olympic games going into overtime. For 16 of the 19 games, the Sports Center was filled, and the concession stands sold a lot of food to the spectators. There were discussions of stolen items at the Crookston Sports Center, so they had updated their camera systems and connected with the Crookston Police Department to allow them to see any foul activities or thefts as they happened.
The next Parks and Recreations board meeting will take place on Monday, April 17, at 4:45 p.m. inside the Crookston City Hall Conference Room.
