With spring baseball season right around the corner, local officials are still debating the condition of the town campus baseball field. While members of Madison Travel Baseball declared the field unsafe at a budget public hearing earlier this month, First Selectman Tom Banisch said the field is in better shape than people think.

The field in question, located on the town campus property, was built in 1998 and has undergone repairs over the years, according to Banisch, who said renovations that took place this fall had a big impact.

Banisch said a team, lead by Doug Minges, did a lot of work on the field. He said the field teams played on last year is not the same one they will be playing on this spring season.

“If you go out and look at that field now, it is in great shape because these guys put a lot of work into it,” said Banisch.

At the budget public hearing, Madison Travel Baseball President Ken Carone came to discuss the deteriorating condition of the field and said it was in need of serious repairs.

“The field is frankly below playable level according to current safety standards,” he said. “It has really fallen into disrepair.”

Banisch acknowledged that the field does not meet all regulations, but said it does meet safety standards.

“It may not conform totally to measurement requirements,” he said. “In the main it does; the one problem is home plate should be further away from the backstop for a regulation high school field, but other than that the field is in a lot better shape.”

While the field had initially been tagged with a $150,000 budget in the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP), the figure was later reduced to $30,000. After a series of meetings, Board of Finance Chair Joe MacDougald said his board felt it needed to reconsider and moved the budgeted number back to $150,000.

Banisch had originally pushed to bring the number down to $30,000, saying, “We have an obligation in town to spend our money as wisely as possible.”

Banisch said that for $150,000, the town would completely remove the current field and construct a new one in its place.

“My hope is that when we go out to bid for the job that we can get it done more cheaply,” he said. “Every time you go out to bid, you see a range and hopefully $150,000 will be at the very top of the range and the bottom will be much lower so it wont cost us that much.”

If the budget passes, Banisch said the goal would be to let the teams play the spring season on the current field and work on a reconstruction this summer. In the meantime, Banisch said he wants to be sure baseball fans know improvements to the field have been made.

“I have gone out an inspected it myself and we are meeting over the next couple of days to walk [baseball league leaders] through the field and show them that it is in a lot better shape and it is playable,” he said. “It will be fine for the season.”