Oakdale Planning Commission Recommends Allowing 70-Foot Ball Field Lights

The Oakdale Planning Commission voted 4-1 to recommend that city ordinance be changed to allow 70 foot tall lights for public, recreational purposes, at its meeting Tuesday, Oct. 6.

The amendment would make it allowable to at . The city and the Oakdale Athletic Association (OAA) are working together to plan and fund the project. 

Commissioner Lee Stolarski said she opposed the ordinance change because she is worried a lighted ball field won't complement future development the city hopes to attract to land it owns across the lake.

The noise of ball games would go later into the night, and bright lights will make the ball field “pop,” from the landscape, she said.

“It’s really going to show up when someone’s out there in a nice restaurant looking at the lake,” she said. “Maybe right now, sure, this would work, but in the long term this might not be such a great idea.”

Other commissioners said they supported the plan.

“I just think it’s a win,” commissioner Kimberly Johnson said. “I’m actually in support of (the ordinance change) because I think that what it does is eliminate a headache down the road.”

Public Works Director Brian Bachmeier said the prohibition of ball field lighting higher than 30 feet was an unintended consequence of a law passed in the 1990s to limit the height of lights in retail parking lots. 

The city’s other ball field lighting was installed before that law was passed, he said.

Although planning commissioner Duane Ellertson voted for the ordinance change, he said he was reluctant. Ellertson said he was concerned that in the future, neighbors of parks where lighting is proposed won’t get the opportunity to be speak at a public hearing.

“This gives OAA a blanket to do what they want with any park in any neighborhood,” he said.

Tanner’s Lake Park neighbor Jerry Belisle spoke against the plan at Thursday’s hearing, saying the project will draw more people to the park late at night, and that the lights will shine onto the lake.

“This will take away the whole feeling of what that lake is meant to be,” he said. “I want to preserve for the next generation this wonderful, little park that we have.”

Bachmeier said due to advances in lighting technology, very little light will shine beyond the ball field.  

“It’s a very modern, very efficient, very direct lighting system,” he said.