EL DORADO — Complex board members met Thursday in the Dumas Pavilion at the El Dorado-Union County Recreation Complex and later walked around the property to review the status of the new fields in preparation for baseball season.
They discussed plans to rid fire ants from the new fields, to fill in pot holes and parking lot damage on a low budget, to thin out some of the pine trees on the property, and walked the complex to review progress made.
Treasurer Bill Evans began the meeting, opening up with a calendar for the Union County co-ed church softball league. The season games are scheduled every Friday, Mar. 10 - Jun. 16, with a post-season tournament Jun. 23-24.
“We had 16 teams last year and we’ll probably have 15-16 teams this year, that represents 20-plus churches in the Union County area and you know we’ll have 300-400 people easy out here on a Friday night.”
The softball league has an 8-2 rule — for every 8 men on the team, there’s 2 women on the team — instead of an even 5-5 rule, because smaller churches haven’t met those numbers in the past, Evans said.
Some churches are signed up already, including: First Baptist Churches of El Dorado, Norphlet and Strong, New Bethel Baptist, Wyatt Baptist, West Side Baptist, First Assembly, and First Methodist, to name a few.
“We have a wide variety,” he said. “We have just about every church from El Dorado.”
An issue brought on by warm weather this year has been the high number of fire ant mounds on the complex grounds. Board members have planned to treat the property as soon as possible, Co-Chairman John Turbeville said.
“Oh, they’re bad,” said one of the members.
Grounds Custodian Mark Conway planned to purchase a palette of fire ant repellent and volunteered to do the work himself.
“It comes in a grand old bag and you just spread it out like fertilizer,” Conway said. “Billy done did it a couple of years ago and we didn’t have fire ants at all for at least a year.”
Currently, the 225-foot baseball fields are usable, however the scoreboards and lights are still being installed and scheduled to be ready in a couple of weeks, depending on the weather, Turbeville said.
“They’re going up, I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but it should be ready in a few days,” said Robert Edmonds, director of public works.
The Boys & Girls baseball league are scheduled to play league games on those fields by April 3.
With more ball fields, come more people and fewer parking spaces.
“Parking is going to become an issue, I’m going to be honest with you,” Turbeville said.
Evans interjected.
“I can tell you now, that when you have a girls softball game and/or a boys baseball game out here on Friday night — especially the way they park when they get out here, cause they think no one else is going to be out here — once the church league gets out here, you can’t hardly get around that parking lot,” he said. “And if you add this to it — I’m just letting you know there’s going to be parking problems.”
At the last meeting, board members talked with Union County Judge Mike Loftin about updating the parking lot. Since it’s a joint ownership between the city of El Dorado and Union County, the two boards have agreed to split the costs. To take care of repainting parking lines, filling in potholes, possible resurfacing and parking lot expansion, each committee discussed spending $100,000.
“$100,000 each!” Hash said. “I don’t think we should spend that kind of money on an overlay.”
Also, a walking trail project has been in development, but the board agreed to focus its energies into building new baseball fields instead.
“I will say about the walking trail, it’s a good idea and all that, but we might want to mark out a walking area, because we’ve gotta tighten up on our money,” Hash said. “We’ve gotta get these other fields done, because that’s the key to the future of this place.”
Also, the number of pine trees on the property has deterred maintenance from other areas of the complex.
“We need to be down working on the dug out tops. There’s one area that’s got no top on it at all. We can better use our scarce maintenance on things like that instead of devoting it to raking and burning pine straw — We can probably get a nice dividend once Conifex goes in. We can sell some of these old pine trees out here and have a little profit fusion.
Board members are still searching for a complex manager. Currently there are four candidates, potentially six in the running, Turbeville said.
“We’re still collecting that information,” he said. “I’ve turned some of the information to the board members to review and we’ll be talking about it pretty soon.”
Nathan Owens can be reached by phone or email: [email protected]. For news updates follow him on Facebook or Twitter: nowensednt.