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Minutes of a Meeting of The North Olmsted Parks and Recreation Commission August 1, 2005 Put a decent field or two up there, and you can get a nice tournament here in the summertime, was one person’s comment. Fix up the north diamond, fix up the main diamond, make that the primo diamond, there will be a lot of people who want to come in here for tournaments. The Hot Stove people can have a tournament here. Mr. Carras agreed. The money that can be brought in for baseball instead of soccer to use this field...(overlapping conversation). Mr. DiSalvo said that Councilman Miller had the floor. Mr. Miller suggested that Ted (DiSalvo) get the principles involved around a table and, with respect to the quotes here; that time is an issue , and see if we can get the parties together. It sounds like it’s a workable situation. It doesn’t sound like it’s an impossibility. Councilman Miller was not hearing any negativity about it. It’s how do we make it work. We’ll see if we can’t get the principles together and see what we can do to make it work. If it means approaching the MetroParks; we have the fields right by Springvale we’ve talked about for years to use that; there is other land that can be used. In due fairness to NOSO, they need to be at the table to see if we can’t resolve it. Mr. Miller sensed that…Ms. Jones interjected, “Why do we have to be there when it can be resolved to go forward because they’ll take it down for NOSO at the meeting?” Mr. Miller said, “Right, but I think we ought to keep NOSO informed in the direction we’re going. I don’t think we should…and then look at the timeline crisis…those are the big items, but if there’s anything else out there that we’re not including…” Mr. Baxter said, “Councilman, what about the parking congestion in the area. Certainly we all know the parking’s at the other end of the Park, not up on the Lorain side to make it an attractive ball field, and I’m all for a good ball field for the high school. But that’s not the best place as far as accommodations. Certainly, talking about other cities, I think our real problem is the piece of land the property was put on is not an ideal park for the parks to make it a softball world type of a place; it’s simply not. There is an impact on the neighbors who live there. There’s an impact on traffic. Certainly there’s going to be a parking problem, guaranteed, if you have a first-class diamond out there. So is the solution really to build up the park. I mean, we’re sitting here tonight talking about it being the City’s problem. Why isn’t it the school’s? Doesn’t the school have land or why don’t they find land?” Mr. Carras replied that they don’t have land; there’s not any land in the City for purchase. Mr. Baxter said that maybe the answer is that North Olmsted Park doesn’t either; not really (overlapping conversation). Mr. Carras said that he doesn’t have another year – he talked with his baseball people last spring and asked them to tell the kids to be good and positive about this because they lost a field last year – and they’re at their wits’ end. He stated that a ball diamond is needed, and he did not want to go into another planning stage again. All that is needed is to put a fence up, and if the City wants to construct a new ball diamond at the other end of that and that becomes the best situation, they’ll pick that fence up because it is temporary in it’s sleeves in the ground; they’ll pick it up and put it down there when the time comes. That’s not a problem. Let’s get a ball diamond for our kids in this town. The High School Athletic Department is trying to improve the Page 10