(Photo via the PBR Tournaments twitter page).
The town of Cortlandville is ironing out details on field maintenance and impact studies for the turf fields at Gutchess Lumber Sports Complex.
A proposal for an annual site visit per field in the amount of $1,850 per field and an annual GMAX test with a written report in the amount of $605 per field was floated at Wednesday’s town board meeting.
John McNerney, the town’s new part-time Parks and Recreation Director, said he will be meeting with the contracting company, Chenango Contracting Company, to discuss details on the matter. The annual site visit, McNerney said, would be part of a field maintenance program.
“We are meeting to talk about what they do with field care maintenance,” McNerney said. “I think it is a good thing, but I'd like to learn a bit more about it and ask some questions that relate to the project, as well as what the best time of the year is for us to do it.”
For McNerney, that time might be the spring.
“We think it is best to do it early in the spring when the fields open because there is a lot of debris that comes from the adjacent farm fields,” McNerney said.
GMAX tests, according to Penn State University’s Center for Sports Surface Research (CSSR), measure the surface’s ability to absorb shocks due to impact.
This test is applied to both synthetic and natural turfs. According to the CSSR, GMAX is the ratio of the maximum acceleration during an impact to the acceleration due to gravity.
Town supervisor Tom Williams advised McNerney to also seek input from the town’s Recreation Commission.
“We have a commission, let’s use it,” Williams said.
