Share the responsibility

July 03, 2008 08:34 am

— Recently, the Village Gateway Technical Committee met and reviewed plans for the relocation of the Cooperstown Youth Baseball facility to make way for improved and expanded trolley parking and a visitor center.

The baseball organization has not been thrilled at the prospect of being relocated, and its president, Dr. David Borgstrom, said it would be happy to remain where it is now. If forced to move, he said, it would have to be to a location that offered the same or better facilities.

It looks like the technical committee and CLA Site, the company hired to do the site assessment and design work for the multi-million dollar Gateway project, have found a way to closely match what the baseball organization has now in size and amenities.

Borgstrom said last week, the design looks like something his organization can work with. That’s a step in the right direction and clears a big hurdle for officials working on the project. But it leaves another, perhaps bigger, hurdle for officials to resolve — who will pay to operate and maintain the facility.

Village Trolley Committee chairman Giles Russell posed that very question during the meeting and again it remains unanswered. Because the facility is being paid for with federal tax funds, the village can’t charge for parking to generate the needed maintenance money.

The expanded parking lot will be used by visitors who will ride the trolley into the village to the Baseball Hall of Fame and other attractions. It should alleviate some of the traffic congestion and parking problems in the village, but we doubt many village taxpayers would want to foot the bill for upkeep of the facility.

We can’t say that we would blame them; after all, we believe it would be safe to say most of those visitors are here for the Hall of Fame. The lot will also continue to be used by Bassett Hospital for employee parking — another use we doubt village taxpayers want to subsidize.

Peter Loyola, of CLA Site, told committee members he will research typical operations and maintenance costs and work up some estimates of what those costs would be. He plans to have them ready for discussion during the committee’s July meeting.

We believe it would also be helpful to invite representatives from the Hall of Fame and Bassett Hospital to the meeting to discuss their role in answering the question of who will pay for the upkeep of the facility. Perhaps it’s time for those two institutions to shoulder some of the responsibility.