By Justin Worsley
Monday's Town Council Meeting in Middletown started off as any meeting normally does, but suddenly got ugly within an hour.
Many of the town residents present were donning clothing branding the town's local Pop Warner football team, the River Plaza-Lincroft Chargers. One of the topic of discussion at the Town Council Meeting was to potentially relocate the team's playing field from it's current location near Nut Swamp Road to a new location in West Front Street.
One of the problems with the current location is parking, which currently holds 100 spots. According to Rob Fischer, the Football Commissioner of the Chargers, there are 15 teams and around 380 players. When Fischer took the reigns as commissioner, there were only 160 players in the program.
The Chargers' home field, Nick Trezza Field, also features four baseball diamonds for a spring baseball league and basketball court. The field is used year-round for all activities.
Middletown Township's goal for relocation is to remove the field from the wetland area it currently plays on and increase parking spots. Parent's however, are unhappy with the location of the new field, which will feature no spotlights, concession stands or public announcement system. The Chargers currently practice in the evening, giving the players time to do their homework and allow them to practice in the cooler night temperatures. Concession stands are also a necessary asset to the program, which sells snacks and beverages during practices as well as games as a mean to increase profits in the organization.
The wetlands situation, however, has a solution that has already been implemented at Middletown High School South, a synthetic turf field. Middletown South, which is also located on wetlands, was approved for a turf field in 2004 after the program had to delay their high school state championship game in 2003 twice due to unplayable conditions of the field after a snowfall caused the field to become muddy and wet.
After Middletown South was given a turf field, Middletown North was then approved for one. The Township plans to give turf fields to both the Chargers and the Middletown Eagles, another Pop Warner football program in town.
These fields, however, are not solely for football. Other sports programs, such as field hockey, soccer and lacrosse will also be involved with using the turf fields.
During the meeting, Mayor Gerald Scharfenberger attempted to remove the discussion about the field to a different date, citing an engineering error as the meaning. The townships engineering firm, TNM, had no representatives present for the meeting.
"If we can do turf at Trezza Field that would be great, but we have some issues, including the space and parking situatiion," said Councilman Sean Byrnes.
During the public speaking portion of the meeting, Allen Vrabel of University Drive, unveiled a new design at Trezza field, displaying additional parking spaces ad well as two baseball diamonds and the turf field. The layout, which was given by an engineering firm who's name was not disclosed, features 220 parking spaces and would only cost an estimated $194,000, a far inferior amount to the Township's estimate, which was anywhere between $800,000 to $1 million, according to township resident Jeff Bloomberg of Lehigh Drive.
"During a man to man talk you had with me, you told me you had to follow the advice of your professionals," said Vrabel to Scharfenberger. "Here are set plans from a professional, you don't know what you're relying on."
"The plans are here, the field fits, you were caught," said Bill Heaney, a volunteer coach for the Chargers. "Let's do what's right for the community. Croydon Hall [the location of the Middletown Eagles playing field] wants their field, Trezza wants their field."
The original bond ordinance for Nick Trezza field and Croydon Hall was written in 2006.
Other members have began writing petitions against the relocation of the Chargers. Mary Mahoney of the Lincroft section of Middletown has submitted 410 signatures and Robert Mosquera has created a web-site, which he hopes to be launched this week. The web-site is an acronym for "The River-Plaza Chargers Need A Field."
"We are going to look at this and determine if this is feasible. In order to plan this, however, we need to speak with the engineer and have him speak to our engineer in order to see if this is viable," said Scharfenberger.
For more information about the Town Council Meeting, visit middletownnj.com. To contact Mosquera concerning the petition, e-mail him at trpcnaf@verizon.net.
