All tied up: Dixon school board votes down fix for football field

DIXON – The school district’s buildings and grounds crew will have to make a precarious A.C. Bowers Field playable for the next several months – at least.

The school board, minus member Scott Johnson, was split Wednesday, 3-3, on whether to approve a nearly $150,000 bid for Bush Sports Turf of Milan to repair the home of the Dukes and Duchesses – and the former home of other community events.

Kevin Schultz, director of buildings and grounds, said he attributed the board’s reluctance to the solitary bid he received.

“If we’d had more than one price in that range, it might have weighed differently on them,” he said. “I don’t think they felt comfortable with the one bid.”

Board members Brad Sibley and Josh Arduini and President Pam Tourtillott voted to accept the bid, while Vice President Jim Schielein and members John Jacobs and Jill Stoker voted against.

Schultz said he hopes to go back out for bids in the late-summer or early-fall. Superintendent Margo Empen on Tuesday voiced concerns about student-athletes – not just from Dixon – competing for scholarships on the field.

Football practices are already farmed out to the Reagan Middle School campus, soccer games that don’t require lights are played at Sauk Valley Community College, and some community events – Relay for Life among them – have been displaced.

Schultz was unable to research bids, in earnest, until voters shot down the referendum to build a new Dixon High School in November.

He posed the issue to the board in February. The district solicited bids from seven companies, but got only one acceptable bid back, for myriad reasons.

Some said they couldn’t compete with the price, and others said their schedules were already too tight to guarantee the work would be done in time for the field to be playable in the fall.

The other option the board weighed was a mostly staff-executed project to fertilize, seed and cultivate a new surface – several times over in the next few months – but even that wouldn’t assure it would be ready for the fall. That option was projected to cost between $50,000 and $60,000, well under the initial projection of $70,000 to fix the field.

Bush’s bid included repairing the serviceable-at-best sprinkler system, while the less-expensive option didn’t.

Without an approved fix, Schultz said he and his staff will do what they can, and use as much as $25,000 in his budget to make do.

“I’m a little disappointed, but I know where the board is coming from,” he said. “My maintenance guys and I will do everything we can do to make the surface safe for our students.”

TO ATTEND

The Dixon school board meets at 6:30 p.m. April 19 in the district office, 1335 Franklin Grove Road.

Go to dps170.org or call the school district's central office at 815-284-7722 for an agenda or more information.