SALEM — After hearing complaints from neighbors over the Salem State College baseball field, city officials want to launch an advisory committee of residents and college representatives to look at neighborhood issues.
Neighbors packed a City Council meeting last week with a list of concerns following the first few Salem State baseball games. They ranged from parking and traffic to complaints about players urinating in public.
So some city officials want to relaunch the Salem State College Neighborhood Advisory Board, which was set up about seven or eight years ago but hasn't met in a few years.
"In the past, it was set up initially just to have an opportunity to communicate more frequently with issues impacting the college, the city and the neighborhood," Mayor Kim Driscoll said. "It gave everyone an opportunity to talk about the best approach to working through problems."
Already, college officials regularly attend South Salem Neighborhood Association meetings and are assembling another board exploring the development of the Weir property.
"This will be separate, distinct," Ward 7 Councilor Joseph O'Keefe said. "Neighbors should know what's going on. College kids come from all over the world, and then they go back home. My constituents are here for generations."
Driscoll said the committee could work on more mundane topics, such as making sure the speaker to the public address system is kept at a reasonable volume.
Salem State spokeswoman Karen Cady, however, wondered if issues like those could be covered by some of the committees that already exist.
"Maybe what we need to do is reasess the committees that are in place right now," Cady said. "Rather than reinventing the wheel, we can figure out if there's a more efficient way of working together."
Cady said the college is addressing a number of neighbors' concerns about the ball field. The college will have a phone number available for neighbors to call if they have complaints and will install signs on Loring Avenue directing people where to park.
Notices will soon be posted in both dugouts instructing people to use the portable toilets, and a permanent bathroom will be constructed in the lower level of a press box later this spring.
"I think we cleared the air quite a bit," neighbor Fran Riggieri said. "But there's still a lot of work to be done."
Riggieri said he thought a committee could be productive.
"By all means, a committee will be the right thing to do," he said.
"If it's not needed, there's no obligation to keep it going," Driscoll said.
