One issue rose to the top of a significant and anticipated agenda during Tuesday’s Cortez City Council meeting: the state of the South Softball Complex.
Young softball players and their parents sported bright orange Cortez Panthers jerseys and watched diligently as their coaches stood during a public comment period to draw attention to the declining complex, which includes three fields.
The fields at 24301 County Road G. 2 lack lighting and face several safety concerns, according to residents and the Parks and Recreation Department.
“That facility is very important to us,” said Morgan Head, the treasurer for the Montezuma Cortez Softball Association.
Six teams are registered with the association and 15 teams were registered with the Southwest Colorado Youth Baseball and Softball organization last year, according to Head. Players range in age from 6 to 14.
“We have four softball fields to manage all of those teams in this area. If we lose those three fields, that is going to be devastating for both organizations,” she said.
According to Parks and Recreation Director Creighton Wright, the department hired an engineer to assess the electrical system at the complex after the bulbs and ballasts went out and the lighting fixtures fell off their posts. The assessment, Wright told the council, found that the switching gear, on the verge of failing, would likely explode.
In 2025, the department decommissioned and turned off the electrical system. Wright estimated the cost at around $1.4 million to complete a new electrical service, install new field and parking lot lights and upgrade the electrical capacity for the concession stand and food trucks.
“We want to fix that. It all boils down to money,” Wright said. He added that designs are underway for the renovations.
Members of the softball and baseball communities expressed frustration at the lack of funding provided to them.
“We need the help. We need it today,” said Chad Pearce, the president of Southwest Colorado Youth Baseball and Softball.
With Cortez’s crime rate higher than the national average, Pearce and others emphasized the importance of youth sports in providing a safe and structured environment for the city’s children.
“There's not a lot of summer activities – baseball, maybe soccer, maybe swim – but this is a place where the youth can spend time together,” said Simon Martinez, a youth baseball coach. “(The facilities) do need to be maintained and they're for a good purpose and a good cause for the children in this town.”
When Wright, who was hired as director at the end of 2021, addressed the council, he called the issue “systemwide,” a sentiment echoed by Mayor Rachel Medina.
“I do think you're in an unfortunate circumstance because you haven't been in the job long. The whole time has been addressing decades of deferred maintenance and everything is in crisis mode,” Medina said to him.
The softball complex, according to Wright, is one of at least six major issues within the parks system, including problems with the Cortez Municipal Outdoor Pool, irrigation at Parque de Vida and Centennial Park and maintenance on the open space trails at Carpenter Natural Area.
“This is not a singular issue that is targeting an individual group,” Wright said. “The short answer is we have not maintained our parks and recreation infrastructure for a very long time and we have not as a community come up with a plan of what we’re going to do when stuff starts to fail.”
This summer, the department plans to create a master plan to determine the priority of needs for parks and recreation.
“This is why the master plan is important for the community to weigh in on what is the priority of all these struggling systems,” Medina said.
avanderveen@the-journal.com
