Tipster Jim Langell is really p.o’d about the hefty $850,00 being spent to renovate Woodman Field. To him, it’s an issue of the Board of Ed’s misaligned priorities: High school science lab – no. Environmental Science Program – no. Baseball Diamond – yes.

The board of education is moving forward with the tree removal at Woodman field. They are cutting down 4 trees to reposition the baseball field. The scary thing is that they will spend the $850k to do it. Another waste of taxpayer funds.
At a time when the High School has just cut $500,000 by not building a new science lab, and given the extreme need for these labs, this makes no sense. The High School also cut a major Environmental Project using photovoltaics in order to save money. Believe me, when the college admissions counselor asks the questions, it’s going to be hard to justify a moved baseball field versus a science lab.

$850,000 to move the field 17 feet. Go figure. In a town that has one of the lowest expenditures on text books per student IN THE STATE. In a town that just eliminated THE ONLY GIFTED ED COORDINATOR FOR THE SAIL PROGRAM IN THE DISTRICT.
The Board of Education doesn’t care what the residents of this town want. It doesn’t care about anyone’s tax burden. It cares about its own bloated bureaucracy and spending the full allocated budget in every situation. They are beholden to no one and relish in it.

47 replies on “Out Of The Ballpark Price For Field Renovation”

  1. This is beyond disgusting. No wonder parents are reluctant to put their kids in Montclair High. What are we paying these outrageous taxes for ? Get rid of these bums !!

  3. M Ontlcait, what ever happened to transparency in Government
    should have said
    MOntlcair, what ever happened to transparency in Government

  4. I’m confused. I thought this issue was killed. What kind of morons are these people? 850,000 for a BASEBALL FIELD?!

  5. I seem to recall there was some kind of grant for this work, no? So the $850k couldn’t be spent on something else. Am I wrong?
    “the field is flammable…”
    Is this really a big drawback for a playing field?

  6. I believe the grant was a donation from a local family for the renovation of the “fieldhouse” at Woodman Field. Not the baseball field improvement.

  7. Let me get this straight:
    We dropped the plan for the new science lab, and are spending MORE than that to move the baseball field SEVENTEEN FEET so lacrosse and baseball can be played at the same time?
    Does anyone CARE that these two games be played simultaneously?
    So, when some college admissions person comes looking at the school and sees a lack of lab space for the science curriculum, should we then say “Yeah but we can play lacrosse and baseball at the same time!”
    That will go over really well.

  8. No wonder there’s global warming, all this heat coming from Montclair parents. Chill. Your kids can make much more money as ballplayers than as environmental scientists. Who needs vegetation anyway; we can all learn to live without oxygen.

  9. Don’t move the baseball field. Years from now, MOntclair will be the famous birthplace of LaBaseCrossBall!

  11. I dont know about admissions but the college sales reps errr recruiters do.
    Anyway, why are people so quick to cut down trees? I did not know oxygen was in the axis of evil.

  12. OK fine- a correction for the nitpickers
    So, when some college recruiter comes looking at the school and sees a lack of lab space for the science curriculum, should we then say “Yeah but we can play lacrosse and baseball at the same time!”
    Don’t we care about our kids education?

  13. By the way, the BOE administrators found the money in the budget to vote themselves a raise this year too.

  14. All of the other High School fields have been upgrated, so isn’t it time for the baseball field to get the same thing done to it? Also, why should a sport not be able to practice on any given day (lacrosse and baseball)because of the field situation? Every baseball team that visits our town for a nice game of baseball is puzzled by the fact that all of the surrounding sport fields are in such nice condition and the baseball field is not! And as a matter of fact, many people DO care about these sports being played at the same time!

  15. America’s Pastime,
    Do you want the baseball field “upgraded” with the special flammable field material that was used on Woodman?

  16. NOT Hiding,
    The baeball field is not going to be flammable. The football field is the flammable material because it is made of turf, not the baseball field which is made of grass and sand.

  17. If the accurate, the BOE is WOEFULLY out of touch with the priorities of the people it serves. It must me great spending Other People’s Money so freely.
    If they ignore the families and taxpayers of Montclair, the only solution is an elected board.

  19. Shitalker,
    Make sure that it’s not the oldest one since Remsen and company have their eyes on tearing it down.
    America’s pastime – are you sure that Remsen doesn’t want a specila flammable baseball field installed?
    Here’s a list of stadiums using fieldturf. Not sure if it’s flammale as the web site doesn’t say.
    https://www.fieldturf.com/baseball/installations.cfm

  20. The $850,000 is NOT for a new baseball field. It’s to MOVE the EXISTING field 17 feet.
    (and to pay for “no smoking” signs for the football field)

  22. for a little more, maybe we could get exploding turf? or at least turf that gives off sparks when you run?

  23. We certainly don’t want the Mountie ballplayers to host games on a field that is inferior to the fields of the visiting teams. Tear down those trees!

  24. But when the athletic recruiters come to scout new talent maybe they’ll be impressed with the field.
    If you want an elected board then make it happen. The voters have voted this attempt down before.

  25. Americas pastime,
    You do deserve a nice field, but not an $850k 17 ft. move. Unfortunaely for your team, the BOE decided to upgrade the football field and not reposition it so there is not enough room for a professional grade baseball field. Who wil protect your baseball players when the womens lacrosse balls go whizzing by their heads?
    Maybe the team could play at the recently upgraded field at Nishuane or at Jackals Stadium.
    Like it or not, there isnt room at Woodman for every team in town at the same time-sportwise or parking wise. There is simply not enough space. Its a matter of physics. If you dont believe me, call the chief of police and ask him his opinion.
    It would therfore be a $850k spend for crappy results and that isnt worth it. Hopefully the BOE wont just vomit up the money just to spend it, but that seems to be a foregone conclusion. They get too much pleasure out of spending my money.

  26. Why spend ANY money on competitive sports? These programs breed arrogant douchebags who go to Duke and rape strippers, then get jobs managing hedge funds. To hell with them all. Organized sports are for cretins, and I don’t want my money going to cretins.

  27. Jimmy229oz,
    I understand what you are saying. But, this problem would not exist if they stayed with the origional redesign. This is the one where the ball field is moved to the back corner of champlain and the railroad tracks.
    Also 4 years ago, it was $800 for Jackal stadium for the afternoon with no lights, and no concessions. Plus the costs of busses makes it not practical and cost prohibitive for this to be an alternative solution for everyday use.
    I hope that whatever changes are made to the field are done for the better so we can just play ball!

  29. Sloppyslick,
    I dont think that that is the right thing to say about competitive sports. What you have made is a strong generalization about all competitive sports due to the recent events at Duke. Not even a very small percent of athletes are what you called them. Also this article is about baseball, not lacrosse.

  31. What about the boys in Glen Ridge?
    They didn’t get into Duke either but they sure did rape a disabled girl in Glen Ridge.
    No need to generalize they are here!

  33. sports cretin,
    How long have you lived around here?
    https://www.salon.com/aug97/mothers/guys970813.html
    on a balmy night in June 1989, Bernard Lefkowitz, an investigative journalist and associate professor in the writing program at Columbia University, attended the graduation of the Class of ’89 in Glen Ridge, N.J. Less than a month before, the manicured, upper-middle-class town had made news when four of its popular athletes were accused of raping a 17-year-old retarded girl. The boys, all high school seniors, lured the girl into the basement of one of their homes with the promise that if she joined them, she would be able to go out on a date with their friend, a boy she idolized. Once there, they raped her with a broomstick, a baseball bat and another stick while several other boys cheered them on. Six in the group eventually left the basement, but not one tried to stop their friends or intervene. The next day, a group of 30 boys tried to convince her to return to the basement for a repeat performance, but she refused.
    During the five-month trial, neighbors donated over $30,000 to the families of the defendants to defray their legal bills. Rather than exploring the incident with students, the staff at Glen Ridge High urged them “not to be judgmental”; the female superintendent of schools went further and asked them to “stand by our boys.”
    Lefkowitz paints a portrait of a town willing to go to almost any extreme to keep the image of its community and its favorite sons untarnished.
    It is a town that had paid little heed to a 1941 Yale University study that declared the local high school placed “too great emphasis on producing winning teams at the expense of important social values.”

  35. are you addressing me?
    cre·tin
    Pronunciation: ‘krE-t&n
    Function: noun
    Etymology: French crétin, from French dialect cretin, literally, wretch, innocent victim, from Latin christianus Christian
    1 : one afflicted with cretinism
    2 : a stupid, vulgar, or insensitive person : CLOD, LOUT
    cre·tin·ism
    Pronunciation: -t&n-“i-z&m
    Function: noun
    : a usually congenital abnormal condition marked by physical stunting and mental retardation and caused by severe hypothyroidism

  39. yeee-hawww!! relax people! we’re the glen ridge boys, and we’ll be bringin’ our good ol’ boy sound to your neck o’ the woods real soon! We can’t find a country club in jersey to play in, though!!!

  40. ‘Twas ever thus…when I was in HS, we couldn’t get the BOE to fund our 4 page school newspaper, for what would have basically been pocket change at the time. They wouldn’t even match the funds we raised thru ads.
    The jocks got anything and everything they wanted. Our school was newly constructed–mahogony panelling, dear ones, and state-of the art sports fields and tracks–and this was before title IX, so they didn’t have the “it’s twice as expensive now” excuse.
    Schools winning games and tourneys get local ink–when we won the Columbia prize in our category, neither The Record, nor the “Local” weekly bothered to put in our press release.

  42. sports cretin,
    I bet the only thing stuck up your bunghole is the rest of the glen ridge lacrosse team. say goodnight, rump ranger.

  43. By the way, the BOE administrators found the money in the budget to vote themselves a raise this year too.
    Posted by: jimmy229oz | June 29, 2006 11:45 AM
    Slight correction:
    It is my understanding that only the administrators earning over $120,000 per year got the increase.

  44. Bet they thought that they “earned” it but that people who were paid less didn’t.

  45. Not to niggle, but where Jim Langell moans that the district, “eliminated THE ONLY GIFTED ED COORDINATOR FOR THE SAIL PROGRAM,” it would be more correct to say that the district hasn’t ever funded a
    single gifted-ed position    , coordinator or teacher or mail clerk. Period.

Comments are closed.