http://www.clarkparks.org/projects/hazeldellsports.htm
Clark County says it’s cooking up a new plan for a set of baseball fields in east Hazel Dell that has angered some of its residential neighbors.
The latest concept, Public Works Director Pete Capell said Monday, reduces the number of trees that would have to be chopped down to develop the county’s first full-size public baseball field on the north side of 78th Street, west of St. Johns Road.
It rearranges the five fields at the site and sends the planned road up the east edge of the property, farther from the closest houses.
“I think the impact to the neighborhood is lessened,” Capell said. “The large field and the parking lot are just farther away.”
The county’s latest redesign of the baseball fields, which would be shared by youth baseball and T-ball teams, the neighboring King’s Way Christian School and the public, reflects a few nearby residents’ tireless campaign to kill the project.
“We’re still against the whole idea,” said Jack Davis, who lives in the house nearest the ball fields.
It’s a federal Superfund site, because of toxic compounds at least 50 feet beneath the surface. The federal Environmental Protection Agency says there’s no danger of exposure.
Davis, a retired employee of New York state’s Department of Labor, disagrees.
“You don’t put people at risk on a Superfund site,” Davis said. “There have been failures in the past.”
The county parks department says the field behind Davis’s house site is the best, cheapest location for what sports advocates say are much-needed baseball fields.
The county has rearranged its plans twice to reduce the number of trees taken out of the forest, responding to concerns by the local Audubon Society and several parks commissioners.
Voting conflict?
Complicating the issue is the involvement of King’s Way Christian School.
Commissioner Tom Mielke attends its parent church, the Vancouver First Church of God. So does Ott Gaither, a politically active local developer who has helped the church with its expansion plans and whose family owns vacant commercial land across 78th Street from the school.
Mielke has not recused himself from votes on the issue. Neighbor Davis has accused the county of treating the church too favorably by agreeing to share public fields with the school.
“Commissioner Mielke is a biased vote,” Davis said.
Commissioners say they’re acting in the public interest, because in return for letting the school use public baseball fields, the public will get to use the soccer and lacrosse fields the school is now planning.
Also at issue is a county requirement that various developments in the area connect with a new intersection planned on 78th Street at the 3900 block, southwest of the proposed ball fields.
As plans for the area’s developments have changed, costs related to that intersection fell first to the church, then to a second commercial development across the street, the Padden Parkway Business Park.
Now, it looks like the sports fields might be built before the business park. If so, the county’s road fund, rather than the private developer, would pay for a road north of the intersection.
Total road costs on the ball-field site might be about $530,000, according to one county study from last October. That was about 7 percent of the total project cost.
County transportation manager Steve Schulte, whose office has been deciding who should pay for various road features, said he’s just trying to follow the rules: the public has to pay if its project is built first, and the business park has to pay if its project is first.
“We have to treat everyone fairly,” Schulte said.
As for Mielke, he said Davis is just trying to make trouble for the ball field proposal.
“If somebody thinks I should recuse myself to vote, I will. I don’t think it’s a problem,” Mielke said. “I think Jack Davis has just got the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) thing.”
