Salt Lake County leaders want the only major bruises sustained on their fields to be to players' egos.
A toppled light pole at Taylorsville's Valley Complex during a nasty wind storm on March 25 sent county leaders scrambling to replace the other poles before summer softball leagues start up again in May.
"It's just a safety issue," said Wayne Johnson, the county's park-operations director.
The County Council on Tuesday approved a $64,000 emergency budget request to replace eight poles at the Taylorsville softball park, located at 5135 S. 2775 West.
Another 12 poles at the park will have to be replaced within the next three years, Johnson said.
Problem poles are not cheap to fix: Each pole costs $8,000.
Nobody could have foreseen the problem at the Valley Complex, as the poles rusted from the inside out. "The pole from the outside looked just fine," Johnson said.
It took the March wind storm that knocked that first pole down to prompt county officials to figure out what happened.
Now they want to make sure this doesn't happen again at any park in the valley. County officials are using ultrasound technology to determine the structural soundness of poles 10 years or older at parks across the county. That way they can determine whether the poles can stay up during blustery winds, Johnson said.
The poles at the complex were relatively old and had been in place since the park first opened in 1979, Johnson said.
Summer leagues will still go on as scheduled, albeit a little late. The season will officially start May 1, about two weeks late, to allow enough time to get the light poles back up at the complex.
"We were anticipating we wouldn't start until June," said Darian Abegglen, program manager for the Salt Lake County Parks and Recreation. "We're ready to start playing again."
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