Input wanted for fields

Sports fields at four Costa Mesa schools have been targeted by the city for renovation and improvement, and the City Council wants residents to speak up and tell the city what they want to see done.

The council will decide Tuesday which local interest groups will be represented on a task force that will guide city planners in their efforts to rethink the use of fields at California Elementary School, TeWinkle Middle School, Costa Mesa High School and Davis Elementary School.

In addition to representatives from the City Council, the Parks and Recreation Commission, the Newport-Mesa Unified School District and the Youth Sports Council, the City Council will pick a group of nearby homeowners associations to each appoint a representative.

“We want to know their concerns — noise issues they have, traffic concerns they might have — so that staff can look at this from a logical basis,” said Public Services Director Peter Naghavi.

Many people who live around the parks and throughout the city have children who use the parks either as students or as members of youth soccer, football and baseball leagues. By getting parents’ input, the city prevents a situation where only one interest group’s needs are met, Naghavi said.

Parks and Recreation Commissioner Mike Brumbaugh, who will be a member of the task force, said one of the important aspects of the committee will be the opportunity it provides for open collaboration between the city and the school district.

Both agencies have to sign off before anything is done with the fields, and early cooperation is a good way to circumvent time-consuming bureaucracy down the line.

One of the challenges in any deal between the school and the city is negotiating who can use the fields and how much. Aside from being used for school sports and physical education activities, many school parks are also used by AYSO, Pop Warner and other local youth sports leagues, which makes who pays for maintenance a consideration.

“I know that maintenance is an ongoing issue between the city and the district — who pays for it relative to how much they use the facilities. I’m sure we’ll discuss that,” said the committee’s school district representative, Walt Davenport.

Brumbaugh already has a couple of ideas for improvements.

“TeWinkle, for one, could use a lot of work on the baseball diamond, and a couple of the other schools could use work on irrigation,” he said.

The task force will compile a list of recommendations, which will be assessed by staff and the City Council. Then, the popular ideas will be made into a master plan, which, along with cost and time considerations, will dictate the future of sports fields.

It should take less than a year to complete the master planning, Naghavi said.

ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at [email protected].