WORCESTER – The Worcester City Council is holding a special meeting Tuesday to decide the future of the city’s Ballpark Commission.
The council first approved the creation of the commission, which is in charge of overseeing the general superintendence of Polar Park, in April 2021 under former City Manager Edward Augustus Jr.
Since then, city councilors have questioned whether or not the commission is accomplishing its intended original mission.
Councilor At-Large Khrystian King asked current City Manager Eric Batista how many revenue-generating events and community days the city had hosted at Polar Park.
According to the city’s agreement with the Worcester Red Sox, the city is allowed to host eight revenue-generating events and 10 community days at the park each year.
During the Oct. 3 council meeting, Batista said the city had not held any revenue-generating events since the ballpark’s creation in May 2021 and has held three community days that the Ballpark Commission approved.
King also asked Batista how often the Ballpark Commission was meeting.
The seven-member commission was initially supposed to meet on a monthly basis, according to Batista, but made a decision collectively to meet on a quarterly basis instead.
Once Batista and his administration revisited what the commission had accomplished in terms of community days and revenue-generating days and realized that the commission had no oversight over decision-making regarding capital improvements, he determined the best course of action was transferring custody of the ballpark to the Department of Public Facilities.
On July 18, Batista sent a letter to the council asking it to change city ordinances to delete the Worcester Ballpark Commission and place Polar Park “under the care, custody, and control of the Department of Public Facilities.”
According to the city charter, the council is required to send the ordinance to a council committee and if the city council takes no action within 90 days of a reorganization ordinance being submitted to them, it is automatically adopted.
The council sent the ordinance to its Committee on Public Works; it was discussed on Sept. 13.
Chairperson District 3 Councilor George Russell and committee members District 2 Councilor Candy Mero-Carlson and Councilor At-Large Morris Bergman voted to recommend the larger city council deny Batista’s request to do away with the Worcester Ballpark Commission.
During a Sept. 26 council meeting, Mero-Carlson said she remembered having an in-depth discussion about the ordinance at the committee meeting and that the representative from the Department of Public Facilities said the department didn’t have the capacity to hold the revenue-generating events at the park.
Mero-Carlson also said she felt like the commission was doing their job.
Batista said at the Oct. 3 meeting that his administration has recognized it’s a challenge for the Department of Public Facilities to manage the intake application and processes of special events.
“So, right now, we are trying to restructure all of our special events for the city, including the Parks Department, that involve (the Worcester Police Department), that involves culture (Development), economic development etc.,” Batista says. “So we’re trying to centralize and kind of streamline that process.”
Councilor At-Large Khrystian King held the item to delete the ballpark commission at the Sept. 26 city council meeting and King, along with District 4 Councilor Sarai Rivera, District 5 Councilor Etel Haxhiaj, and Councilor At-Large Thu Nguyen voted to hold it again at the council’s Oct. 3 meeting. The second time a councilor moves to hold an item, they need a total of four votes in favor of the hold.
The city council had until Oct. 16 to respond to the reorganization ordinance before the commission would be automatically deleted. The city’s next full council meeting following the Oct. 3 hold is Oct. 17, meaning the council would not have had a chance to discuss it before it was decided without holding the special meeting on Oct. 10.
The Oct. 10 special meeting is scheduled for 4:30 p.m.
Kiernan Dunlop is an award-winning journalist who has spent the past five years reporting in Worcester, New Bedford and Antigua and Barbuda. She’s been published in Bloomberg, USA Today, Canary Media, MassLive, and the New Bedford Standard Times, among other outlets. She can be contacted at kdunlop@theworcesterguardian.org.
