“The Chuck Johnson Field saga continues. What happened to a 10-year life, virtually maintenance free, and only to be used 12x per year? Now, the lights (nice touch, eh Chuck?) are on almost every night of the week, and sometimes hosting pick-up soccer games. This is indicative of the culture at RHS and the whole BoE over the past 20 years. “
Don’t blame Chuck, this scam was pulled off by Fast Eddie…
Turf fields in flood zones dont mix
Didnt the company that installed the turf field get caught giving kick backs ?
Dont blame chuck you all voted for the turf
We’re talking about what was some of the most exclusive real estate in the village, which from August through December was restricted for use solely by the RHS football team and the marching band, and when the grass was damp, even the marching band was kicked off (while the football team and its opponent enthusiastically chewed up the field to within an inch of its life). After Christmas and New Year’s, during the late winter and early spring, literally everyone was banned from using the field so that it could recover from the yearly fall trampling. Of course, this allowed the field to be re-seeded, fertilized, watered, and otherwise expensively pampered in preparation for the famous RHS graduation ceremony. By late June, the grass was admittedly beautiful, and certainly soft beneath the feet of girl graduates in their flowing white dresses who, in accordance with decades of tradition, tended to take off their shoes during the ceremony. That said, net-net, making the RHS football field a multi-use field by turfing it was a good decision. So many more students and other people have now had the benefit of its use, it’s not even a close question.
The new budget includes replacing the turf at RHS with more artificial turf. I did not see a dollar amount next to that line item. It was installed I believe in 2012. It didn’t last 7 years and that was with costly maintenance.
The folks from the Willard district got the $44MM bond referendum pushed through….that’s how this happened. Someone was clever enough to wrap the turf and track installation into the same package.
Fast Eddie and Cap’n Jack. Two peas in a pod. But I’m sure Chuckie didn’t mind having a playing field and a practice field. Gets to show off to all his star struck fans.
I told you all that do not trust their bullshit story regarding Turf fields. They should’ve really installed sod. We cannot keep on replacing turf fields every 10 years or more if we get flooded. Yes it looks nice but it cost more.
The demise of the turf field might well have a sod ending.
This recent replacement will only be after 7 years and at least 200,000 dollars has been spent on repairs and maintenance due to past flooding.
anyone who thinks natural grass would be a better solution than turf has no clue what they’re talking about. Sure it sounds nice in theory, but in practice it is completely unrealistic.
So grass is unrealistic? We played on it for years and something upwards of 90 percent of professional players [soccer,baseball, football ] prefer grass to artificial turf. We have a bigger problem in Ridgewood. We put turf in active floodplains. It was not made for that. Environmentally it is a disaster. Financially, it is more costly to install and to maintain. It needs to be sanitized which they left out of the scenario when they decided to sell us on it.
Does anyone know how much it costs to maintain a grass field on a yearly basis?