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David Turin submitting comments re: grass fields at Lincoln Park.
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To the Honorable Board:
I am a 14-year resident of the Lincoln Park neighborhood and am concerned about the proposed redesign for the field in Lincoln Park, which calls for a U12 artificial turf field. My wife, Marian, and I enjoy seeing the field used for organized sports, and our 10 year old son plays youth soccer, but we are very concerned about the potential loss of this unique large piece of natural space in the City. Somerville has very little green open space left and we believe that the City should attach a far higher value in protecting and preserving what it has than this plan proposes. The City Planning Department and the design consultant have insisted that a natural grass field cannot sustain the current usage and point to the current condition of the field as evidence. However, given its poor design, use of substandard soil, chronic failure of the irrigation system and general lack of maintenance of the field since it was reconstructed after the completion of the Argenziano School in 2007, we do not think the existing field condition is representative of the use that it can potentially sustain. Nonetheless, as field usage was obviously a big part of the discussion, and there is an appearance that Lincoln Park is absorbing an unreasonable share of the programming, a number of neighbors and I felt that it was important to get a better handle of who was using the park and how much. Not only did we want to understand the relative use levels across the city parks, we also wanted to understand the extent to which the number of permits being issued to non-Somerville groups was driving the perception that Somerville needs artificial turf fields to support the demand for field space.
As I have had several discussions with Alderman Heuston regarding field use in Somerville and the City's plans to redevelop Lincoln Park in particular, and knowing that you are chairing a meeting of the Open Space, Environment and Energy Committee of the Board of Aldermen, Alderman Heuston suggested that I send you our analysis of field use across the City. I am also copying Mark Niedergang, as he discussed field use and community concerns about Lincoln Park in a recent newsletter.
With significant help from some other people, my wife and I created the attached spreadsheet with data from the Somerville Recreation Department's website that show the 2015 scheduling for all the fields, except Foss and Triangle, for which scheduling information is not provided. Using our best judgment, we separated the users into six categories (Somerville Youth, Somerville Public Schools, Somerville Adults, Non-Somerville Adults, Non-Somerville Youth, and "Misc"). The small number of users for whom we could not determine a user category, we marked with a question mark ("?"). The first tab, marked "data," contains all the information used to develop the tables and charts in the other tabs of the spreadsheet. We also attached a PowerPoint presentation that portrays the same data in a more visually accessible format on a park-by-park basis.
For a little background, as you may know, the City's redevelopment plan for artificial turf for the multi-use field at Lincoln Park is predicated on assumptions for field use from the Gale Associates field assessment study submitted to the City in June 2013. The Gale study concluded that a) there were 1218 "team uses" scheduled at Lincoln Park for the year that they surveyed and b) that natural grass can generally support 250 team uses per year. Since Gale defined a team use as a 1-2 hour event, the 1218 scheduled uses should correspond with up to 2400 scheduled hours of play. In our analysis of the Lincoln Park multi-use field data, we found that there were 286 team uses scheduled in 2015, significantly fewer than the 1218 uses cited in the Gale study. Looking at the number of hours programmed in 2015 (rather than the number of use permits), the 2015 Recreation Department data indicate just under 1100 hours of use, or the equivalent of 550 two-hour team uses, again, significantly less than the programming suggested by the Gale study. As an example of this disparity, the Gale study attributed 820 uses just to Somerville Youth Soccer, while in 2015, we count 136 team uses, totaling about 680 hours.
If the Gale study's assumption that natural grass can support 250 team uses (or 500 program hours) per year is accepted, our analysis shows that the field may be over-programmed by approximately 500 hours, much less than the over-programming suggested by Gale, and perhaps a far more attainable reduction or reallocation to other fields, especially, if the City is willing to reassess its field rental policy to non-Somerville groups. With this in mind, our analysis of the Recreation Department data, regarding the proportional use by the six user categories, described above, shows that non-Somerville groups comprised roughly 22% of the users of Somerville's parks, City-wide. For Lincoln Park, non-Somerville adults make up approximately 15% of the scheduled uses. It is important to note that this is the scheduled hours, which may not reflect the actual hours played for any of the user groups.
Unfortunately, I cannot make the meeting on September 16th, although I hope to make subsequent meetings.
Sincerely,
David Turin