Antrim Parks & Recreation Commission
Minutes
June 13, 2013
The meeting was called to order at 7:11 pm, after moving to Town Hall due to Great Brook School graduation.
Attendance
Parks & Rec Commissioners: Mike Genest (Selectboard ex-officio), Joan Gorga, Peter Lamb, Isaac Lombard, and Tim Smith
Recreation Director: Celeste Lunetta
Minutes
The minutes from the May 9, 2013 meeting were approved with minor changes.
Shea Field
Scoreboard. The new scoreboard has just been delivered.
Additional field space
Cemetery field. Mike will walk down to the cemetery field with Officer Ryan Storrs to check for a 100-foot line of sight. Pete walked the land with Ben Pratt, one of the cemetery officers, who thought that the land is likely to be available for 30-50 years, perhaps for a fee in the range of $1000 and keeping the grass mowed. Usage would have to be limited to low impact sports, as it would be hard to justify constructing a high quality turf field for use for such a limited time span. Mike will continue to follow up on this.
Other potential space. Additional turf field space is also needed. Since GBS played baseball on Shea Field, most of the “majors” baseball games were played away. GBS also increased its use of the soccer field. Peter Lamb pointed out that a 5-acre parcel of land that is relatively flat and mostly open field is for sale on Smith Road for $90,000. Pete will make some inquiries into the sentiments of nearby residents and the possibility of funds being available for purchasing such land.
Memorial Gym
Fans. Fans have been installed and are working in the gym.
ConVal Agreement
Update. Galen contacted the School Board regarding the status of the latest draft of the Proposed Letter of Agreement for the Antrim Memorial Gymnasium, dated March 20, 2012. The School Board responded that the letter had been received from the Town of Antrim, and would be put on the Budget and Property Committee meeting agenda for the July meeting. We were unable to determine the exact date of the meeting, but several members of the Parks and Rec Commission will try to attend, with the goal being to try to adjust the wording to achieve approval on both sides. A few changes in the draft wording were suggested.
Gregg Lake
Fishing tournament. The nature of Galen’s contact with the Mohawk Bassmasters is still unknown.
Lake Host/Weed Watcher training. There will be no update on Weed Watching this year. Celeste will offer Lake Host training from 1-3 pm on June 15th and 29th, in the Rec Office. Marcel Kallanian has agreed to start Lake Hosting at 6 am this year, in order to survey early morning fishermen, who are some of the most likely to move from lake to lake carrying invasive species. We will have two others doing some paid Lake Hosting.
Beach issues. A guard rail at the beach parking lot was broken and has been fixed. Celeste mentioned coming across some discussion of debris on the lake bottom and cloudiness of the water at the beach. It appears that the sandy bottom has not been raked for many years. The commission approved the purchase of a beach rake for $100, and the lifeguards will be instructed to rake the beach during slow periods. If this doesn’t resolve the problem, we may need to consider bringing in more sand. Pete put in a request to fill in the holes in the parking lot again this week.
Rec Dept Staff and Programs
Update. Two new lifeguards have been hired. June 26th is Opening Day at the beach. A falconer will be there. Antrim Friends of Recreation will be selling snacks on Fridays. The summer programs brochure went out in the Limrik to every house in Antrim.
Memorial Park
Skate Park
Pyramid reconstruction. The framework is 60% complete, but it probably won’t be ready for the scooter competition. Tim is looking into getting some used equipment from the Windham Skate Park, which is shutting down.
10-Year Plan
Survey. Because Parks and Rec already had two inserts (the summer programs brochure and the Antrim in the Evening flier) to go into the Limrik, we were denied the opportunity to have the survey distributed with the Limrik. We decided to hand it out around town and at Memorial Park over the summer, and tabulate the results in the fall. Accordingly, a few final changes were made to the survey, and Celeste will make copies and start distribution.
Limrik Article. Joan will distribute a first draft of a Limrik article describing the history and evolution of Memorial Park to Commission members to consider at the next Parks and Rec meeting. There will be time for revisions before the August 8th Parks and Rec meeting and the August 10th Limrik deadline.
The next regularly scheduled Parks & Recreation Commission Meeting will be held on Thursday, July 11th at 7:00 pm at the Rec Office.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:47 pm.
-Joan Gorga, Chair and Secretary
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