With an eye to the future, Pea Ridge school officials have accepted a contract from Greg Baxendale and Shane Smith on the baseball and softball fields.

"We did not enter conversation to dump the baseball facility," Rick Neal, superintendent said. "We want to make sure we have a place for our kids to play and have an opportunity to look to the future for our school. That was the whole process.

"That was what made this so intriguing ... they will make it a nice facility, improve it, and the school can lease it back and still use it," Neal said, explaining that selling the property will bring in money for the school to use to purchase land on which to build a new school. He said the school has used all the land currently owned.

"The baseball complex is a free and clear parcel of land. We use it for the baseball and softball programs -- about three months of the year," Neal said. He said Baxendale has proposed adding batting cages and making it more attractive. "We can lease it back from them and that will save us maintenance costs."

Neal said the school district spends from $10,000 to $15,000 on the baseball/softball field complex annually.

"We have been approached by individuals in the community about selling land to us for potential building sites," Neal said.

In discussing the possible sale of the land, School Board members Ann Cato and Joshua Ramsey emphasized the need to have the lease protect the school so that even if the situation changed with the new owner, the school would continue to be able to use the land.

"I do have a contract with them right now," Neal said.

"Our hope was that they would improve the facility and we would have an opportunity to purchase another parcel of land for future development, ball field or school, just preparing for growth. That was the context of the conversation," he said. There are no plans to build a new ball field in the immediate future.

"Our baseball and softball programs are strong, we want them to continue to have strong programs. We want them to have a place to play -- a really nice facility. We wouldn't have been able to pour the money into the facility at this time to improve it," Neal said.

General News on 03/26/2014