Councilman Berlon Weeks looks at his prepared remarks before the council meeting, but he said he decided speak from the heart rather than notes when discussing the town’s youth sports program.
By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter
After months of political conflict and infighting among residents, the Bronson Town Council voted unanimously Monday to continue operating Bronson Parks and Recreation for another year rather than allowing an all-volunteer group of mostly parents to take over the program.
Councilman Berlon Weeks said the city needs a year to evaluate BPR and give Parks and Recreation Director Curtis Stacy time to recruit more volunteers and increase the number of youth baseball, football and soccer games. He said he wants volunteers to become much more involved in the program.
When the number of volunteers helping the program increases and the number of youth sports games rise, the program should begin making more money and the budget numbers will improve, Weeks said.
“A lot of it is we had to pay overtime to people and people just walked away and didn’t work the concession stand and didn’t help out so my thing is I would like to see Curtis challenge that by adding more baseball games in Bronson and doing more football and doing more soccer and let’s see if we can get the volunteers to show they really want to keep the program,” Weeks said.
Weeks said the program is all about the kids and he felt if the town changed from BPR, a taxpayer-funded youth program, to Bronson Youth Sports, LLC., a private organization, the kids would have been hurt.
“That’s what it’s about. It’s for the kids and if we make this snap decision and went to BYS (Bronson Youth Sports private group) instead of keeping BPR another year we would have ended up hurting the kids,” he said.
Angela and David Lamb organized and incorporated Bronson Youth Sports, Inc. when there was talk among council members of switching to an all-volunteer program. Weeks was an early advocate of changing to an all-volunteer program.
The Lambs were present at the council meeting. They sat soberly watching Weeks and the council dismantle their efforts to bring back the program with a volunteer organization.
But after three months of sometimes angry debate in meetings and allegations that the council was trying to fire Stacy by eliminating BPR, the council backed away from its proposal to eliminate BPR.
Weeks said he gave the matter considerable thought and came to the conclusion that the town needed to evaluate BPR another year to figure out if the program can be salvaged with greater involvement by volunteers.
“The only way to make this work again is to have volunteerism help Curtis,” Weeks said.
But Weeks said there would have to be structural changes in the way James H. Cobb was maintained by public works and in the way employees were assigned by public works to the park. The park’s two maintain security lights continued to malfunction until Spotlight contacted Duke Energy to report the problem recently. Duke Energy immediately replaced the lights and sensors.
“I think we need to look at the way we handle that from the public works side and we can look at the way he helps on the parks and recreation side,” Weeks said, apparently referring to the Public Works Director Erik Wise. “I honestly think if we give it another year we have another opportunity to show it can work. It’s been a complete change of my mind. It’s taken two weeks of really going in and taking a look at the way things are done with public works and invest the time to go and find out what the problem is and how to fix it.”
Over the next two months, Weeks said the town council needs to set benchmarks for what the council expects to happen with park maintenance and with the youth sports program through next year. He said the town needs to determine whether BPR works or not. He said the BPR program has dropped from hosting four weekends of youth baseball games per month to hosting one of weekend baseball games this year.
By the end of May or July of 2020, Weeks said the council should be able to take a look at the management of BPR and the maintenance of the park by public works and determine if the benchmarks have been achieved. He said he also wants to set benchmarks for the volunteers to become more involved in the recreation program and in operating concessions.
“I think if we do that I think it’s a good opportunity for the town to come back together and get rid of this infighting with each other and let’s see if we can do something to make Bronson a viable and wonderful community for everybody,” Weeks said, drawing applause.
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Town of Bronson Regular Meeting July 1, 2019; Posted July 1, 2019
