With the Fort Borst Park joint artificial turf project now completed, the Centralia City Council on Tuesday, March 11, voted unanimously to create a turf maintenance and replacement fund to pay for maintaining the new turf and repairing or replacing damaged turf in the future.
The turf project was carried out by the City of Centralia, the Centralia School District (CSD), the Twin Cities Sports Commission (TCSC) and the Lewis County Public Facilities District (PFD).
PFD Board President Ron Averill explained to the council the fund was needed to ensure the longest life possible for the new turf.
“As I said to you when we had our meeting on the fourth with the city council and school district, one of the things that happens in government is we tend to buy things and forget they have a lifespan to them and they have to be replaced,” Averill said.
He added the expected lifespan for the turf, “depending on usage,” is between 10 to 15 years.
Per the ordinance in the council’s meeting agenda report, the turf maintenance and replacement fund will be sourced through five possible means, including:
• Direct appropriation in the city’s budget from tax levies or other anticipated revenue sources
• Appropriating city budgetary transfers from other budget funds
• Payments, appropriations or transfers from the CSD
• Revenues generated from park facility rentals, special events or other revenue-generating events involving the turfed fields
• Donations from members of the public
Money in the fund will “be used for the construction, alteration, repair, maintenance or replacement of the turf fields at Fort Borst Park and other similar uses,” the ordinance stated.
The turfing project was started after seasonal rains kept some of the fields unusable for weeks at a time going into spring in the past.
This led to many tournaments and teams seeking fields elsewhere in recent years. The project’s goal was to bring them back to the Fort Borst Park ball parks.
It was recently announced at PFD and city council meetings that demand for the fields has already increased. Almost every weekend between March and October had been reserved by teams or tournaments by the end of February.
At one point, turfing some of Borst Park’s soccer fields was also considered. However, due to their proximity to the Chehalis River at the south end of the park, it was going to be much more difficult to turf those fields, according to Amy Buckler, Centralia deputy city manager, parks director and member of the turfing project’s governing board.
The city is still working with Centralia Youth Soccer to turf the soccer fields, with a memorandum of understanding on the issue to be brought forward for council consideration possibly later in March, Buckler previously told The Chronicle.
In total, approximately $4.8 million was allocated to turf the fields by all the partners involved, with $1.45 million coming from the City of Centralia’s American Rescue Plan Act funds.
The CSD had a total of $3,370,000 budgeted to turf the fields of the Quad Complex.
A total of $2,430,000 of the CSD funding came from the state budget. Additional funding came from a TransAlta grant totalling $430,000, with the TCSC also providing $110,000 and the PFD $400,000.
