To the editor:

After a long debate — over 20 years worth on my end and many other people and private groups also on redoing victory field and track — the Barrington School Committee finally realized that sports do matter. 

The School Committee approved a new field project updating Victory Field to turf and redoing the track to state of the art. Since graduating Barrington High School in 1981 when there was a limited number of sports offered,  the town has incorporated many more sports and programs offered to the youth. And those sports require more fields. Our facilities are outdated, by 30 years or so. This state-of-the-art complex will fit in with the new school projects. 

This new synthetic turf field at the high school will only help school sports and Barrington Pop Warner in the fall. The townspeople still need to support the turf field project at Barrington Middle School for the town youth sports programs to help get our grass fields rehabilitated to better conditions. This project with help with letting the town close a grass field for a year to rehab it. There are many fields that need to be fixed in town and will take more than 10 years to do it. This synthetic turf project will also help with rain delays and games for the youth that get cancelled due to the wet fields policy in town.

In the coming months you will hear many different opinions on synthetic turf, many scare tactics from different groups. Please do some homework and get the real facts. The industry has come so far in 10 years with improvements to 100 percent of recycling the turf to better padding, better warranties. There is a company that offers a 10-year warranty, there is infill that is organic and 100 percent recyclable, and there is turf that needs no infill. 

There have been many studies out for and against. The most recent came out because everyone was saying crumb rubber caused cancer. The CDC, I believe, came out with a recent report stating the very opposite. So please do your homework if you’re on the fence. Our town has no other options for fields without many sports not being able to play while we try to get natural grass fields better.

After attending the Town Council meeting on July 22, I found out that the School Committee voted to support the synthetic turf project at the middle school a few months back so we could vote on this at the FTM. It seems they are changing the rules and coming out with demands. 

The School Committee now seems like they don’t want to help the youth of town and want to control this new field for school sports. 

The Town Council has tried to meet in person with the School Committee to no avail. The demands were sent by the School Committee’s lawyer from an executive session and not from an open meeting.

It’s time our School Committee stops being so demanding and work with our Town Council, and help the whole town and not become divided and power hungry.

Thomas Rimoshytus

Barrington