The Board of Education announced at Tuesday night’s meeting that it will be able to reopen the track behind H.B. Whitehorne Middle School this spring after repairs. But the repairs, which would cost $3,700, would only be a temporary reprieve for the track.
The BOE closed the track in December because part of its surface had separated from the underlying material, forcing the Verona High School winter track team to train elsewhere. The track was built 11 years ago in partnership with Montclair Kimberley Academy and is heavily used for competitions in spring and fall by VHS and MKA. The track has also been closed to the general public and to all Verona Recreation Department programs, but its center field remains open. The outdoor basketball court, which was resurfaced with $21,500 out of the town’s capital budget last fall, also remains open.
At Tuesday’s meeting, BOE Buildings & Grounds committee member Glenn Elliott said it will cost approximately $140,000 to rebuild the track. The current rubber surface, which has been replaced twice since the track was installed, will have to be scraped back to the underlying asphalt. The BOE also must address drainage problems in once section of the track. The cost of the work would likely be shared with MKA, but no agreement has been finalized.
Elliott also asked the BOE to proceed with soil testing on the on the upper football field at VHS. The field was closed this fall after a hole opened on the property in August; a second hole opened in October. The problems may stem from wells that were built more than a century ago when a large orphanage existed on the property. But when the field was expanded in the late 1970s, the then BOE used fill from an industrial site, reportedly a former Edison Laboratory building.
Current school officials want to know now what specifically was in that fill, and are weighing the possibility of seeking so-called brownfields funds from the U.S. Department of Environmental Protection to remediate the site. The troubles at Thomas J. Sellitto Field have prompted the board to put perhaps as much as $4 million in sports field work onto its $9.1 million to-do list for school facility repairs. Verona will likely have a referendum for repair spending this year.
