By Patrick McGroarty
Reporter Staff

Each spring and summer, Kevin Monahan guides 140 girls aged from kindergarten through high school through a season's worth of batting practice and pop flies as the organizer of the St. Brendan's softball league.

The quality of Toohig Park, where the league holds its games and practices, has always had something of an endearing quality to it: there are too few trash barrels, and heavy rains can turn the clay infield into a nightmare for flighty fielders.

But in the past two seasons, Monahan says the quality of maintenance at the park has reached an all-time low.

"The grass has gotten so long that what would normally be a good hit just dies," said Monahan. "We're literally out there looking for balls after practice as opposed to fielding them."

Tom Leahy, president of the Cedar Grove Little League, understands his frustration. Leahy said that the Department Conservation and Recreation (DCR), which maintains Toohig Park, McMorrow Park, and Ventura Park among others in the neighborhood, have slipped drastically in their ability to regularly pick up rubbish, mow the grass, and maintain playing fields for both leagues.

Recently, Leahy sent an e-mail to the parents of every young slugger in the Cedar Grove league urging them to contact DCR Commissioner Steve Burrington to express their concern. While he is unsure how many parents took up the cause, his own efforts to contact the DCR did yield a response from the DCR's communications office. According to Leahy, he was informed that the root of the problem was a cut in funding at the state level. A portion of the DCR budget goes to the salary of seasonal employees, often high school and college students, who are responsible for maintaining fields such as Toohig. Leahy said he was informed that a decrease in funding meant a decrease in the amount of seasonal positions available.

State Representative Martin Walsh, who sponsors a little league team in Savin Hill, acknowledged that the department's funding had been cut and that the grass at McMorrow field often grows a bit long, but said that a level of accountability is required of all state organizations.

"We need to reallocate some resources here," said Walsh. "I don't like being critical of state agencies, but you can't hide behind the fact that the legislature has cut your budget as an excuse for poor services."

Vanessa Gulati, press secretary for the DCR's Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, said that the level of funding allocated to seasonal employees to maintain the parks in question had held steady at approximately $2 million per summer since the DCR was created combining the Metropolitan District Commission and the Department of Environmental Management in 2003. She suggested that heavy rainfall this spring and a shortage of seasonal workers prior to high school and college dismissal may have caused the perceived dip in DCR services.

"We got a couple of calls about the length of the grass right after all the rain, and the real problem here is that the grass was not mowed because of the weather," said Gulati. "We don't expect to hear complaints again, and we're in the process of putting together a regular schedule for maintenance."

Leahy acknowledged that since the rain stopped and his complaints began, the grass has been mowed and the lines repainted. But he said he would reserve any sounds of satisfaction until a time when that kind of response became the norm. "It's gotten to the point where they wait until somebody calls, and they shouldn't" said Leahy. "I can live with the weeds if they would just cut the grass."