Sports teams will pay to use lights at West Deer's Bairdford Park

Youth sports teams that play at West Deer’s Bairdford Park will now pay for any electricity they use while there, township Manager Dan Mator said.

The agreement ends a dispute of almost 20 years over who pays for what at the 94-acre township park — the taxpayers or the youth sports teams. The park is home to the Deer Lakes Youth Baseball, Soccer and Softball organizations.

“If they don’t like our rules, those are our fields; they can go get their own fields,” Mator said.

Mator said the Deer Lakes Youth Baseball Association had, at one point, removed the lock on the park’s breaker box and replaced it with their own lock. By doing that, they had “unfettered access” to the electric panel, he said.

Mator said the township and baseball association previously had agreed the association would contact the township each time they wanted to use the ball field so someone could unlock the box and turn on the lights. The baseball association was supposed to pay the township $150 per game to use the lights.

Mator said the baseball association told him they removed the township’s lock because it had been vandalized.

“Whether it was vandalized or it was whole, who gave them the right to cut our lock off of our box and use our electricity?” Mator said.

Jay Fraser, president of the baseball association, said he made Mator aware of the situation the day after replacing the lock and provided the township with a replacement key for it.

“We didn’t report (the problem). We just replaced it,” Fraser said. “We felt like we were doing the right thing. I wasn’t going to leave the box unsecure.”

Fraser said the association was under the impression the township would pay for the electricity because the association had paid for and installed the lights. He said a previous agreement the association had with the township had a similar arrangement.

The situation has been rectified through a lease agreement that says all youth sports will pay for utilities unless they are metered separately for the township. Use of the fields remains free.

The township is invoicing the baseball association for electric use at the park since the beginning of the year, and the baseball association has agreed to pay.

“I believe, as good faith citizens, we agreed to do that, as long as there was a way to track usage, which in the past there was not a way to track usage,” Fraser said.

This is the first time the baseball association has had a formal, written agreement with the township, Fraser said. He has been with the baseball association for three years.

“I know the previous administration had had multiple conversations and tried to work out a lease agreement with the township,” Fraser said. “For one reason or another, those conversations were stalled, whether that be a result of the conversations regarding lighting or who was responsible for maintenance of the field.”

Supervisor Beverly Jordan has been involved with youth baseball since 2002. She said electricity at the park has been an ongoing issue. She thinks the association should pay for what they use.

“It would be nice after 18 years of being involved that we finally put a period to the end of this story,” Jordan said. “This has just been way too long. It’s just a nightmare.”

The township will pay about $1,000 to install an electric meter at the park’s pavilion to monitor electric use there, Mator said.

“In this situation, you would have the pavilion metered, and we would subtract that from the bill and that’s what they would be invoiced,” Mator said.

“I’m in complete agreement with that,” Jordan said.

Mator said the township is supportive of the teams and helps out by letting them use the parks and fields. The township also works to improve those parks and fields to give the kids a better experience, Mator said.

“They’re a local organization, and they’re a youth organization which we all support … but there’s a right way of doing things,” Mator said.

Fraser said the baseball association is grateful for what the township has done. But they, too, work to update the park.

In the past five years, the baseball and softball associations have spent more than $50,000 replacing dirt, maintaining fencing and updating the dugouts. When the township hosts events such as Community Days, which cause damage to the fields, the associations pay to fix them, Fraser said.

“There is a ton of investment that’s happened on the part of our youth organizations that wasn’t mentioned, and we’ve tried to do everything we can to be good faith citizens,” Fraser said.