Sports lighting shot down by committee

ANDOVER — The prospect of well-lit playing fields at the new high school is starting to dim.

The High School Building Committee voted against adding lighting to the front multipurpose fields and the baseball fields at its meeting on Aug. 24.

The committee has been tasked with designing a new high school, which was originally priced at $480 million. Proponents of the project say AHS is overcrowded and aging, while those against the project point to its enormous price tag.

Athletic Director Wayne Puglisi said lighting the fields would extend the hours of play for students, while abutters worried about how the lighting would affect their quality of life.

“We would be able to get all of our teams on campus during the busiest season of the year,” Puglisi said.

If fully implemented, the lighting would have added an extra $5 million to the project.

The committee held off on taking a vote on lighting the plateau field. They also voted to add conduits to the unlit fields, which would accommodate lighting in the future or any other project that would require electricity.

The Eugene Lovely Memorial Field has lighting already, which will remain.

The conduit system was priced at a past committee meeting at $125,000 per field.

When asked if students could be bused to other fields, in order to give them more field time, Puglisi said that was not a likely scenario due to trouble getting buses for athletics.

“That transportation issue is a monster of a problem,” he said.

The committee is in the midst of deciding what to add and remove from the new high school project. They are also running out of money to work on the design phase and will soon require a Special Town Meeting to grab an extra $1.3 million to finish up the work.

It is also unclear how borrowing so much money for the project would affect the town’s bond rating. A downgrade could further increase the cost for town construction projects.

Comments for the Andover High School Building Committee can be sent to [email protected] while more information on the project can be found at andoverhighbuildingproject.org