Another Example of Baseball Fields Not Being a Dream for Taxpayers

While we were at the Eagle Ridge Inn this past fall, the Telegraph Herald out of Dubuque ran an article about the Chicago couple’s attempt to turn the movie’s Field of Dreams into a 24-field youth baseball and sports complex.

Article about the Dyersville City Council approval of the Field of Dreams baseball and softball complex from the Telegraph Herald, September 9, 2012.

If that reminds anyone about the failed attempt to get the McHenry County Sports Complex off the ground, it probably should.

It’s not that the proposed Lakewood development would not have cost taxpayers money (although my request for what it did cost has not yet been fulfilled), but I don’t think that total amounted to what Oak Lawn couple Denise and Mike Stillman’s Go the Distance Baseball LLC proposal will cost taxpayers in Dyersville, Iowa.

The article said the All-Star ballpark Heaven got 3-1 approval from the Dyersvill City Council.

The cost to the city’s taxpayers?

$5.1 million in property tax rebates over 15 years.

The only person at the meeting, Pat Meinert, talked of agreement as “this elusive agreement that we’ve heard of for months,” but haven’t seen, according to the Telegraph Herald article.

Sounds pretty much like the Frontier League Baseball team proposal made by Mark Houser to the McHenry County College Board.

The difference is that no one on the McHenry County College Board voted against the proposal, although two did recant in comments before the Crystal Lake City Council. They were Donna Kurtz and Scott Summers.


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *