Cannon County school leaders, Touchdown Club push for full football-field rebuild and irrigation repairs

Community volunteers and the Touchdown Club asked the Cannon County Board of Education on Feb. 10 to authorize a sealed-bid procurement for a full rebuild of the district football field, saying repeated spot repairs have failed and that irrigation defects are creating safety hazards.

"We've been patching and trying to fix and upkeep it for the last several years, but you're putting a Band-Aid on it," a community representative told the board, asking the district to move from temporary fixes to a major redo. He introduced Jason Barrett of the Touchdown Club to review contractor estimates and technical details.

Barrett said the field has not been resodded in about 15 years and described rutted, sunken areas that he said threaten player safety. "It's been, I'd like, close to 15 years since it been resodded," Barrett said, adding that repeated traffic from soccer, middle-school and youth-league practices had accelerated wear. He and other presenters said the likely underlying cause is leaking or improperly set sprinkler heads and recommended irrigation repairs before surface work.

Their proposed scope includes digging and resetting irrigation heads, adding roughly 10 loads of sand/topsoil to raise low spots, grading, resodding and top dressing to ensure a uniform playing surface capable of supporting multiple programs. "Once you get that solidified, then you can go into the next step, which is the sand and the topsoil," one presenter said.

Staff and board members clarified procurement and budget timing. Because the project is expected to exceed $25,000, the board would need to authorize the district to advertise sealed bids; finance staff would publish the ad and accept sealed proposals. Administrative staff advised preparing detailed specifications (irrigation work, sand/topsoil requirements, and potential backflow replacement) and running the legal notice for no less than two weeks to ensure a competitive process.

Board members and presenters discussed scheduling constraints. Contractors estimated roughly six weeks for on-site work; presenters requested that construction begin after spring sports and graduation to allow sod to root before fall play. District staff noted the fiscal year ends June 6, and invoices processed after that date would be recorded in the next fiscal year.

The board agreed to add a 'start bid process' item to next month's agenda to authorize staff to prepare specs and advertise sealed bids with the requested timing; no formal vote was taken at the Feb. 10 workshop.

Next steps: staff will work with the presenters to draft bid specifications, run the public notice in the local paper, and include schedule requirements so work would occur after spring activities and graduation.