HomeMy Public PortalAbout17-08-02 Public Comments Received from July 25 to DateAugust 2, 2017
Members of the ad hoc Committee on Victory Field Phase 2:
Attached are all the emails that I received since our last meeting on July 25 through today from
the public, or that were forwarded to me from other members of the Committee, and are for
our consideration as we develop our recommendations.
Please note that I did receive several emails that were entirely for or against artificial turf, and I
have chosen not to include those because they are outside the mandate of this committee.
Thanks
Vincent Piccirilli
Chair
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Date: Tue, Jul 25, 2017 at 6:51 PM
From: Chris Lowry, Marshall St.
To: Elodia Thomas, vincent.piccirilli@gmail.com
Cc: Wilson Lowry, Marshall St
Subject: These lights are crazy)1111 MUSCO lighting brochure for Victory Field Phase 2
Dear Elodia and Vinnie —
I will not be able to attend tonight's meeting after all.
If possible, could you forward Wilson and my thoughts to the committee regarding lights and
parking?
Thank you,
Chris
Parking:
As a Victory Field neighbors who live on Marshall Street, we are opposed to adding parking and
driveways in Phase II. We often have cars parking in front of our house for Victory Field events.
We expect to have people parking in front of our house: it is a public street with easy access to
the fields. We were well aware when we decided to live in the neighborhood that we would be
sharing our street in this way. Given the age of Victory Field, we suspect there are very few
neighbors whose choice to live nearby predates the fields! There will never be enough parking
for events at the fields, and therefore neighboring streets will always serve as overflow. Open
space and natural green park areas are so much more important than a little extra convenience
at the fields. Athletes are capable of walking and carrying equipment a little further if the buses
cannot drop off in the ideal spot. If necessary, we are sure we could work out a simple
permitting system to prioritize spaces for elderly to have access to walking the track.
Lights:
We absolutely oppose adding to light pollution by making the track oval daylight -bright at night.
It is totally unnecessary. Further, as a near neighbor, the lights will be more than a nuisance. If
it is possible to add lighting to bring the field to a late winter afternoon light level with lights
that only light the field instead of the entire area and Whitney Hill, we could support such an
addition to extend the playing hours through 8 or 9 pm.
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Letter received: July 26, 2017
From: Dick O'Connor, Channing Rd
To: Elodia Thomas
Victory Field Phase Two: Victory Field Should Continue to Serve the Entire Community
The renovation of Victory's Field's track area is up again for discussion. The Town Council has appointed
an ad hoc committee to study proposed plans and make recommendations in September. These plans,
basically identical to those put forward three years ago, would rob the area of much of its grass surface
while introducing several intrusive and heavy-handed innovations which would go far toward destroying
the open feeling which has made it so inviting and attractive a playground for generations of Watertown
residents.
Among the changes proposed are a parking lot, additional lighting for night games, rubber hardening of
the eastern part of the 'oval' to concentrate track and field events, and a concrete pad just outside for
the two equipment storage containers owned by the schools. A bocce court and long rows of black
metal poles and netting at both ends of the field have not been approved by the committee. Conversion
of the area to artificial turf, though central to the original plan, has been withdrawn by the Town Council
from discussion but continues to have many outspoken advocates among school officials, coaches, and
recreation personnel.
Most of the proposals were drawn up by paid professionals to serve their own interests, which are paid
school, recreation department, and youth sports programs which yearly generate considerable revenue
for school and recreation revolving funds, an unfortunate necessity of modern community athletics.
While the majority of people using the field - for informal sports, practice, exercise, and a myriad of
casual recreational activities - who pay taxes but no additional program or permit fees - were neither
consulted nor included in the initial planning.
365 days a year the area is used by the people of Watertown for casual and informal recreation. In Fall
and Spring often up to 350 persons per day come to throw or kick a ball around, get up games, go one
on one with friends. Families play on the field, fly kites, or get together for picnics. Students
rendezvous after classes to hang out or lounge on the grass and talk. Runners, joggers, and walkers
circle the track, and the tennis and basketball courts are always popular. Groups of adult women arrive
for Pilates and other exercises on the lawn or to socialize. Older residents relax on the bench under the
shady tree and just enjoy the show. In one part of the oval, a high-spirited game of tag continues while
in another a stately Tai Chi class is in progress, and not far away a father coaches his enthusiastic
daughter in some of the finer points of field hockey. In a parked car a young woman peruses her tablet
while two cars away lovers meet. Nearby, inside the fence, a lone birdwatcher scans the trees. During
the coldest, snowiest times of winter there might be only 20 or 30 visitors a day but skis and sleds are
brought in, parts of the track cleared for hockey, and always walkers. From counts made at all times of
the day for almost a year I would estimate almost 60,000 visits per year for casual and informal
recreation.
The popularity of these six acres comprising the eastern portion of Victory Field is not hard to
understand. Thick with grass, luscious with white clover, and dotted with trees in proximity to the
wooded hillside and all under a dome of sky, they constitute one of our most beautiful natural areas,
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and their openness and greenness have lent themselves to a wide variety of sports and play for almost
90 years.
Yet some are keen to alter and even destroy this great resource for the sake of heavier scheduling of
local as well as outside teams and organizations to increase revenues from program and permit fees.
Six years ago artificial turf was installed in the historic football and baseball areas of Victory Field and,
though we hope it has been successful and enjoyed by the athletes who play there, it has become, even
when open to the public, rather a vast wasteland as far as the casual and informal recreation of our
citizens is concerned. Why? Because artificial turf has very limited and specific, mostly athletic uses
while a grass field, like the one at the track, may be used by everyone.
Our schools, town recreation programs, and youth sports vendors have every right and good reason to
use the track field as they always have. But when their use encroaches upon, abridges, denies, or
discourages the traditional rights of the town at large, then the people of Watertown must firmly stand
in opposition.
Dick O'Connor
81 Channing Road
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Date: July 27, 2017 at 5:55:49
From: Ronna Johnson, Marion Rd
To: Elodia Thomas
Subject: tweaked letter
Dear All,
I'm out of town for the summer as I am every year, and though I cannot attend town meetings, thanks
to Elodia Thomas's emails I have been kept in the loop about threats to the community -based identity of
Victory Field (VF), where I live less than 2 blocks away on Marion Road. I have been reading with
trepidation about the continued assault on our neighborhood by VF sports boosters who don't live in
our neighborhood and who somehow think that dinky little Watertown public school sports matter to
the extent of overriding interests or uses of everyone else who are stakeholders — adult neighbors and
users — of VF. Or those who think making VF a viable sports complex that can be rented to outside users
is a smart way to spend our tax money and dwindling open spaces resources.
These proposed arena -level sports lights depicted in the MUSCO pamphlet and plan are appalling, just
on the level of size, mass and fire-power. (These lights in the brochure remind me of Jimi Hendrix's
legendary performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Woodstock in 1969 when he made his guitar
riffs sound like exploding rockets in battle — a very scary and serious evocation of war.) The "brochure"
is filled with computer generated or doctored images of "brilliant" playing fields ablaze with the
company's lights and a lot of undocumented rhetoric pumping up the product the company is trying to
sell without alarming those who have to live with it. Those glaring lights will be no bother to neighbors;
no disruption of the night sky. Really??? Do those folks and proponents of these lights think we nave
never been to a lighted -up local field, never mind Gillette Stadium? Or Fenway Park? I didn't buy my
house thinking I was going to be living in close proximity to a blazing sports "complex." I'm disgusted by
the continued efforts of Watertown councilors and their sports -obsessed allies, including the local press
(I'm thinking of the barely disguised advocacy for expanding VF in the Watertown Tab, which I have
noted to Dana Forsythe is the epitome of unbalanced reporting) to foist on us expensive sports facilities
for reasons I find suspect: Their vaunted interest in kids playing sports is just a smarmy cover to the
barely concealed greed to rent our new rebuilt, community -unfriendly field to out-of-town users. Where
would that earned money go, I wonder? Or else the advocates for bigger VS wish to express some
boosterism for the town that is very unflattering to those who promote it.
I've written emails to Peter Centola in response to his periodic summary of news in Watertown --
retailing mostly uncontrolled development in the West end and Arsenal street area. He has never
answered me. In fact he has stopped including me on his list of Watertown residents who receive his
self-important — and self-aggrandizing — missives about the progress of what seems to me to be the
virtually unchecked development and over -development in Watertown. For anyone who has lived in
Watertown for any length of time, building developments, on Arsenal for instance, are an eyesore and
cause traffic problems. And who are these developments primarily serving? Developers. I'm not sure I
see other or Watertown beneficiaries for them. Do all their users and employees live in Watertown?
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When I was a child during the Cold War living in Watertown I was afraid the "Russians" would bomb
the Watertown Arsenal and we'd all die; I used to pack up my dolls every night to make a quick exit in
case of attack.
I wish that was all we had to fear now about the decommissioned Watertown Arsenal. Now we have
to fear aggressive and unreflective development, and that is reflected and repeated in the continued
battle over VF to preserve it for us, the neighborhood and the town's residents, including those who
don't have kids — mostly boys — in our school sports. Kids who don't pay taxes, while we adults do. Kids
who need to have their schools improved by increased investment in teachers, classrooms, textbooks,
even school lunches. Kids who need serious investments in their actual futures of work and living, not in
the opiates of promised sports augmentations. This is what the proposed bulking -up of VF looks like to
me, and I'm only writing half of what I see.
I know this is no Churchillian, measured or even diplomatic argument to preserve our park. We may
be past the niceties of diplomacy, since all the proposed changes to VF are permanent and they will
have permanent impact on our neighborhood abutting it and on our town. What needs to be
permanent, invested in now, is our youth's education in our schools — not in sports education but the
kind of pedagogy that gives many more young people growing up in Watertown a viable cultural and
economic future. I am steamed with every attack by town councilors who propose to develop VF on our
peaceful and relatively quiet neighborhood. I've said it before and I'll say it again: those opposed to the
town's greedy and expensive plans to mangle VF ought to form an association and hire legal counsel to
represent and argue for our interests. On the most base level of concern, the proposed amping-up of VF
will lower the value of my property on Marion Road. Be advised that I will retain counsel to protect my
investment when it comes time for me to retire and sell. I will keep a very careful eye on what happens
to my property's beauty and desirability if those glaring lights (already bad enough, even from my block)
and astro turf (a Carcinogen, haven't we established that?) and more fields more parking more more
more are implemented at the expense and reduction of what was beautiful about VF, and consequently
desirable about my neighborhood located near it.
I know I am speaking to the choir here, but feel free to send my words on to those who are less
conscientious about our town; send them to Centola! I am one irate, tax -paying nearly -abutting resident
of the VF area neighborhood and I vigorously oppose the proposed changes to Victory Field.
Ronna Johnson
43 Marion Rd, since 2007
137 Langdon Ave, 1986-2007
39-41 Evans St, 1952-1963
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