Bob Yancy said:

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Well I'm sure that is probably why TIB WAS put in motion. As for conditions, have you voiced your concerns to the Parks department? Volunteered for any committees? Spoken before council during hear visitors? These are sure fire ways to make a difference in your city. And as for Brian's park, the citizens just approved a bond election to upgrade most everything out there, because a duly elected council, citizen committees and staff identified it was needed, put it before the citizens and they said "yes" on Election Day. That project will start soon. The process works but demands your involvement.

Respectfully

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I'm pretty sure CS voted yes to the Bond to put these fields in place! So maybe do what your constituents want!
As for coming to meetings, I've been involved in several city council issues and quickly found that decisions are already made based on money backing or opposition to a project behind the scenes. You can tell me otherwise, but I've seen it in action.

I'm disappointed and dissatisfied with the decision about the ball fields, but more upset about acting like the city had no prior knowledge to the barrow pit situation when it was a city decision to do it.

Hard to have faith in a process that burns us, miss uses our funds, then lies to our face.

I am actually curious how these bond elections and the aftermath operate. A few questions:

1. Should they go back with the new information to vote to cancel the bond? What would keep city council from just canceling any bond that they don't like that passes?

2. Can they reallocate the funds to another use? Then you could just put a bunch of bonds out there that sound great and then shift the funds to other uses that wouldn't have passed.

MeKnowNot said:

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Isn't the "base-line" question:
How many kids in College Station can't participate in baseball because we don't have enough baseball fields?

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To tack on to this. A question that is not being asked is "how much is this expected to cost per additional baseball kid?"

If the answer to the "How many more kids can play baseball because of these new multimillion dollar fields?" is 500 per year, then we can do some interesting calculations. Suppose the additional draw on the general fund is $1.5 million per year (capital and O&M costs minus fees and additional sales tax receipts from tournament visitors). That calculates to $1,500,000 / 500 or $3k per player per year. You could adjust my numbers, but that is the kind of calculation that I would hope the proponents of these kinds of projects would deal with.

Super bothersome to me that council refused to do it last year before taking out the loan and starting construction. Not sure what the story is with the soil, but perhaps performing fiscal reality checks were not the only corners cut in the rush to start construction before voters could say "no."

I am super skeptical of anyone proposing this kind of project without doing this kind of basic "what are we getting for how much?" calculations. Franklin's subsidy for the travel baseball players of College Station is not a reason to be spendthrifts with our tax money.

If other government entities want to subsidize your baseball (or conventions, or minor league hockey arenas, or waterparks, or Jurassic Live-worthy arena space, etc.), that's great for you. But I would hope that leadership in CS city government would do some basic "why would we do this?" analysis before following suit.

We have too much cool stuff going for us in this town to waste money on whatever small town governments think is the hot new thing. Those projects are pursued by other communities because they don't have anything half as cool as what we have. Blowing tens of millions of dollars on distractions is not conducive to capitalizing on the amazing peculiar opportunities we have.

if you look back through the imagery on google earth, looks like it was used as a barrow pit starting in 2004. The pit at that time was roughly 3.2 acres in size.

By 2005, it was about 11 acres in size. and more or less kept this size/shape.

In 2010, it looks like there was substantial soil removal, there is standing water in the pit (with a pump and pipe visible to drain it), and substantial gully erosion on the banks of the pit.

In 2011, it appears that the pit has been back filled and smoothed out. The soil that it was filled with looks white, like caliche.

in 2012, it is mostly vegetated, but there are a lot of bare areas of exposed caliche on the southwest portion where the deepest part of the barrow pit was.

The pit doesn't get fully vegetated until 2016.

Also, there is a 1.6 acre oil/gas pad that has been next to the barrow pit since at least 1995. The pad was abandoned sometime after 2013, and was nearly revegetated by 2019.

TLDR, how did no one at the city know the history of this property?

TexasAggie_02 said:

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if you look back through the imagery on google earth, looks like it was used as a barrow pit starting in 2004. The pit at that time was roughly 3.2 acres in size.

By 2005, it was about 11 acres in size. and more or less kept this size/shape.

In 2010, it looks like there was substantial soil removal, there is standing water in the pit (with a pump and pipe visible to drain it), and substantial gully erosion on the banks of the pit.

In 2011, it appears that the pit has been back filled and smoothed out. The soil that it was filled with looks white, like caliche.

in 2012, it is mostly vegetated, but there are a lot of bare areas of exposed caliche on the southwest portion where the deepest part of the barrow pit was.

The pit doesn't get fully vegetated until 2016.

Also, there is a 1.6 acre oil/gas pad that has been next to the barrow pit since at least 1995. The pad was abandoned sometime after 2013, and was nearly revegetated by 2019.

TLDR, how did no one at the city know the history of this property?

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Great summary. Pretty common knowledge, to a certain degree, that is was used like this. I do not like throwing them around, but incompetence and negligence, seems like appropriate diction and that is very disappointing, aggravating, and disheartening as a local taxpayer.

Also, this summary, is the same reason that Barron Rd will always dead end at the Gogh Gogh Coffee/Remax building. Thoroughfare plans would could Barron Rd to Rock Prairie East but that is not feasible because of floodplain and the pit nature of a lot of the area to the West of Rock Prairie east.

You are still being vague about "other" sports.

The city converted the adult softball fields at Central Park to girls softball. Veterans has expanded to soccer fields and multi purpose fields. Adamson Lagoon hosts a swim team program that anyone can join until they graduate high school.

The softball fields, soccer fields, and multi-purpose fields are used for league teams, tourney teams, and for hosting tournaments.

The baseball fields would have been used by Little League AND travel teams.

It's not either / or.

Stupe said:

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You are still being vague about "other" sports.

The city converted the adult softball fields at Central Park to girls softball. Veterans has expanded to soccer fields and multi purpose fields. Adamson Lagoon hosts a swim team program that anyone can join until they graduate high school.

The softball fields, soccer fields, and multi-purpose fields are used for league teams, tourney teams, and for hosting tournaments.

The baseball fields would have been used by Little League AND travel teams.

It's not either / or.

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This is excellent news!

It sounds like you feel that we have met the core needs for recreational sports activities for our College Station community. The City does need to build any new facilities with tax dollars, just maintain what we have.

If tournament level facilities are a good investment, I fully encourage others to build them to with private funds and hope that they have great success. If the returns look promising, I might even consider investing in such a project.

Deleted. I get irked when I think people take the ability to use tax money on their pet projects for granted.

I personally desire the fields to be built as I am an avid user of Bachmann, Wayne Smith and Travis (in Bryan).

I voted yes to the Bond. I was disappointed in the guy vernment heavy spending on the project though. The 3 fields in Bryan cost around $6 mil (privatized) and we were gonna build 4 for near $24 mil based on GC bids. Seems like a disconnect there, especially when I see the $30 million dollar football stadiums going up around texas, I'm not sure why we were paying so much. Then saying an additional 7-10$ million to clean it up!

Ludacris.

Brian Alg said:

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Deleted. I get irked when I think people take the ability to use tax money on their pet projects for granted.

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I have no idea what you are trying to say with that statement.

The baseball fields aren't a pet project to me. I don't have a kid in Little League or on a travel baseball team and I wouldn't personally benefit from them being built.
I voted for the bond because I know that teams have problems getting fields and if there are rainouts they lose out on games due to the lack of fields and time.
I think that if kids are involved in activities, it's better for them than sitting at home.

The ball fields would also bring in money to local businesses when tournaments are hosted.

I feel the same way about the soccer fields and multi-purpose fields at Veteran's Park.

I feel the same way about the facilities at Consol even though I don't have kids that went there.

Some things are just good to support. Even if they don't have a direct positive impact on the person supporting or paying for them.
And, don't forget, I also pay those taxes. I don't take anything for granted when I vote on bonds.

+1 to everything you said.

Bob Yancy said:

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Well that's at once very helpful and disappointing. Would love a way to fulfill the baseball need affordably. You seem highly knowledgeable in all this.

Would the baseball fields bring in outside visitors? What % of the need is local vs tourism?

Are there any underutilized existing fields/space that could be affordably converted/upgraded?

What led to the decision to build TIB in the first place? I wasn't at city hall. Please advise.

How many fields are required to achieve critical mass for local and/or tourism? 3? 5?

Is synthetic turf necessary? Does it last? Does the ground undulate over time? If it does is it expensive to fix?

Was TIB the right call back in 2017?

What would you do in this situation if you could wave a magic wand?

Please advise

Edited for: scratch all that let's get lunch or coffee instead. It's on me. Pls send email to byancy@cstx.gov if you'd like.

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Another suggestion would be for the city to partner with Franklin to where fields in both CS and Franklin are used simultaneously for the same tourney. Most teams that play in Franklin for 3-4 days stay in College Station because there are more accommodations available. Franklin only has 1 hotel. Go to their website www.texaspremier.org and check out their summer and fall/spring events and leagues. Just because kids play at the 12 doesn't mean they are all from CS. In HS ball that is a guarantee.

My son played with the 12 for 11 years. I have been to Franklin so many times - even just for practice.

I also want to point out local HS also look for turf fields to play games when the weather rains them out in season. Navasota ISD has been real busy getting business from CSISD. Many playoff games are played there too. A playoff game was moved to Navasota to finish AN INNING!

TexasAggie_02 said:

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if you look back through the imagery on google earth, looks like it was used as a barrow pit starting in 2004. The pit at that time was roughly 3.2 acres in size.

By 2005, it was about 11 acres in size. and more or less kept this size/shape.

In 2010, it looks like there was substantial soil removal, there is standing water in the pit (with a pump and pipe visible to drain it), and substantial gully erosion on the banks of the pit.

In 2011, it appears that the pit has been back filled and smoothed out. The soil that it was filled with looks white, like caliche.

in 2012, it is mostly vegetated, but there are a lot of bare areas of exposed caliche on the southwest portion where the deepest part of the barrow pit was.

The pit doesn't get fully vegetated until 2016.

Also, there is a 1.6 acre oil/gas pad that has been next to the barrow pit since at least 1995. The pad was abandoned sometime after 2013, and was nearly revegetated by 2019.

TLDR, how did no one at the city know the history of this property?

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The first question is why did the engineering firm hired not identify these potential issues? Was not a soil test made?

I'm going to respond to that post a little out of order.

First, I don't take anything personally. If someone gets insulted by the opinions of other people, they need to grow up.

Quote:

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As I eluded to in previous posts, providing reports, studies and actual numbers to support the need for ballparks, along with what benefits they would provide to tax payers it would go much further to support this type of project than your opinions and personal feelings.

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That is exactly what you are doing. Your opinion is that there should be a measurable ROI on kids being involved in extracurricular activities.

I disagree with that opinion. I think that there are unseen benefits to kids being involved in extracurricular activities. You keep going back to the baseball fields and ignoring that I've said the same thing about Consol and the other types of fields.

Stupe said:

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I'm going to respond to that post a little out of order.

First, I don't take anything personally. If someone gets insulted by the opinions of other people, they need to grow up.

Quote:

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As I eluded to in previous posts, providing reports, studies and actual numbers to support the need for ballparks, along with what benefits they would provide to tax payers it would go much further to support this type of project than your opinions and personal feelings.

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That is exactly what you are doing. Your opinion is that there should be a measurable ROI on kids being involved in extracurricular activities.

I disagree with that opinion. I think that there are unseen benefits to kids being involved in extracurricular activities. You keep going back to the baseball fields and ignoring that I've said the same thing about Consol and the other types of fields.

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With this line of thinking, should the city also provide ample opportunity for kids to participate in other City sponsored sports including, but not limited to: golf, hockey, figure skating, rugby, lacrosse and rowing?

If College Station is to become a true sports mecca why not build and operate dedicated facilities to host other competitive sports such as swimming, volleyball, basketball and cheering?

I'm not going to get into a Slippery Slope fallacy argument where you just start listing sports that won't have the participation level required to compete.

If there are enough kids interested in participating in a sport, I think that the city should provide opportunity for that sport.

Based on the sports you have listed, you don't check the COCS activities page for athletics.