Photo by Rich Schmitt, Staff Photographer
Dog owners, who for years had been letting their off-leash canines run on the playing fields at the Palisades Recreation Center in the early morning, were upset when a 7-ft.-high steel fence was installed in late December around the Field of Dreams. The owners felt that park officials wanted to close down their ad-hoc dog park that has existed for years, despite posted signs warning that a City ordinance prohibits off-leash dogs at City parks. However, the real reason for the fence is to protect against vandalism. Unfortunately, the gate locks had not been installed by the end of last week, and Monday morning, juveniles broke into the Pacific Palisades Baseball Association sheds and took the golf carts and the ATV vehicle for joy rides on the fields. They destroyed most of diamond 4 and left tire tracks in the grass field at the front of the park. Police arrested the youth about a mile from the Recreation Center at around 2 a.m., when the juveniles were discovered pushing a golf cart labeled PPBA. Damage is estimated in the thousands, according to PPBA Commissioner Bob Benton, who is also a member of the Palisades Community Center Committee (PCCC), which paid for construction of the Field of Dreams and is responsible for ongoing maintenance and improvements. ’The PCCC would prefer that the cost be reimbursed by those who are guilty, rather than the committee pressing felony charges,’ Benton told the Palisadian-Post. Palisadian Mike Skinner, who has chaired the PCCC for 10 years, cited other vandalism that has happened since the four fields were completed. ‘A fire was started and doors were broken in one of the containers where our maintenance vehicles are stored,’ Skinner said, ‘and we’re constantly fighting graffiti.’ The PCCC was founded in order to pay for a total overhaul and upgrade of the 50-year-old ball fields and surrounding areas. After the plan was approved by the L.A. Department of Recreation and Parks in 1999, funds were raised through private foundations, organizations and 400 individual donations. When the $1.1-million Field of Dreams complex opened in September 2003 after a nine-month construction period, it featured new lights, new backstops, new fences, real dugouts, pitching bullpens and batting cages. The entire field was graded, leveled, and supplied with sod and a new irrigation system. The PCCC continues to raise money to cover the $50,000 a year needed for maintenance of the fields and various repairs. ‘Taxpayer dollars pay for none of this upkeep,’ Skinner noted. Instead, about 80 percent of the annual maintenance budget is paid through PPBA player registration fees and fundraising events such as the annual pancake breakfast. Individual donations must fill the gap. Last summer, after Department of Recreation and Parks officials learned they couldn’t use Prop. K funds to install the $10,000 protective fence around the Field of Dreams, they came to the PCCC, and the committee agreed to fund it. (Prop. K, which passed in 1996, has provided funds for the improvement, construction and maintenance of City parks and recreation facilities.)”””””’ ’People don’t realize the cost to keep the fields looking good,’ Skinner said. ‘To repair the area where a car has driven, the existing soil must be dug up, the hole filled, ground compacted and then the area resoded.’ A ‘Field Closed’ sign is posted when the fields are muddy, but is usually ignored. Now it can be enforced by the closed fence, and the ball fields will benefit. For example, after the heavy rains in early January there were numerous dog-paw prints in the dirt infields at all four diamonds, which required hours of labor to repair for PPBA tryouts. ‘To smooth out the soil,’ said Skinner, ‘you have to get a shovel and dig up the prints, then refill and rake it. The City doesn’t do it, the maintenance crew that we hire does. My job is to protect this asset and investment that so many in the community worked to achieve.’ The fencing project was completed Tuesday night, when locks went on the four dugout gates and the three gates into the field. They will be opened when Rec Center staff arrive at 9 a.m. Monday through Sunday and locked by 9 p.m. Monday through Friday (on 5 p.m. on the weekends). With the fence now preventing dog owners from running their dogs on the fields every morning, PPCC maintenance workers won’t have to waste time cleaning up dog poop in addition to their normal responsibilities, Skinner said. To donate to the Field of Dreams, call (310) 478-5041.
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