Borough Council could decide lighting issue Monday night
By P.J. D’Annunzio, Staff Writer, KennettTimes.com
The fate of these lights — shown last summer as the model originally slated to be installed at Kennett High School’s football field — may be decided at Monday night’s Kennett Square Borough Council meeting.
KENNETT SQUARE — During Monday night’s KCSD Board meeting, Kathy Hahn, a spokesperson for residents whose properties border the high school, delivered a presentation before the board detailing the residents’ opposition to the proposed stadium lighting for the High School football field. Both the district and residents have been engaged in a legal fencing match since the stadium light proposal was officially announced last summer.
“As a resident of the larger Kennett Community, I oppose the stadium field lights because these lights will undo the last 25 years of careful municipal planning to preserve the town’s historic character and the high school’s stately presence at the foot of Broad Street. I encourage Board members to view for themselves the visibility of these structures by stopping into the upper baseball field. For comparison, the baseball backstop is 30 feet high; the proposed light standards which will be located behind the third base line and will reach 88 feet into the air,” Hahn said.
The residents’ concerns, however, were not limited to the perceived blemish that the lights would impose upon the Kennett skyline.
“As a resident who lives three blocks from the stadium, I also oppose the field lights because they will bring amplified sound,” Hahn said. “The noise from the amplified sound system will break the evening quiet. The luminaries will reduce, if not obliterate the stars and night sky that I enjoy viewing from my backyard. And I anticipate issues spilling into my neighborhood for Friday night football.”
Finally, Hahn commented on the later practice hours made possible by lighting, stating that it would effectively keep student athletes away from their families.
“The strongest predicator of lowered risks from failing in school and avoiding drug and alcohol abuse is family connectedness,” she said. “The Journal of the American Medical Association conducted a study a few years ago that suggested that family mealtimes are the primary avenue for staying connected to and creating stability and security in an adolescent’s life. Your plan to have the fields in use until 10 PM on weeknights and 11 PM on weekends will disrupt this family time by removing student athletes, school coaches, and school staff out of their homes.”
After Hahn finished her presentation, the Board rendered its opinion.
“There are some things that I’d agree with you, some of this may be fact- a lot of it is your opinion,” KCSD Facilities Chairman Dominic Perigo said. “And I don’t want the perception to be that this is for football only. Football only plays 10 games, and only 5 are home games. In fact football would probably use it the least in comparison to other sports.”
Board member Aline Frank also stated that she believed the lights would “add charm to the Borough— which has a very nice character that the lights would only add to the revitalization effort to the community.”
Perigo went on to state that the interest in implementing lighting goes beyond the interests of the District itself.
“This is not necessarily a school board initiative: this is a community,” he said. “This is what our parents want; they want to let their kids have the full high school experience. This is being driven by our constituency. It’s very obvious to me that I get more people in this borough and in the extended vicinity that want lights. We have to give the benefit of the doubt to the larger constituency. If the majority of the people thought this would be bad for our community they would let us know, as they have in the past in other issues.”
With neither side backing down, the issue will be deferred to the Kennett Square Borough Council which initially granted the district a zoning variance to erect the lights—which would exceed the maximum height limits for structures within Borough limits.
The Borough Council is expected to render a decision determining the legality and appropriateness of implementing the lights during next Monday’s public meeting.
To learn more about the history of the lighting initiative and its impact on the Borough, visit: https://kennetttimes.com/?p=770
