New state of the art lights will soon be installed at the Cheney/McGlynn sporting fields.
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The area is one of the primary sporting and community recreational open space areas in Parkes.
It comprises the existing Stephen Davies Hockey Field, recently completed synthetic hockey field, eight sealed netball courts, seven grassed fields, large sports field, amenities buildings and two sealed car park areas.
Parkes Shire Council met this week to approve the new lighting.
The project will see the replacement and installation of 14 lights (facing west) on Stephen Davies Hockey Field and 16 new lights on the existing touch football fields
The Parkes Pumas Touch Football Association wrote to council requesting assistance in upgrading the lighting of the Cheney Park Touch Football fields.
The association indicated they had funds to contribute toward the work and asked council to manage the infrastructure upgrade.
The lighting issue has been a concern for some residents in the area for some time, but recent onsite meetings have been quite favourable.
Mr Les Finn (Council’s Director Technology and Corporate Affairs) said it was brought to council’s attention during construction of the new synthetic hockey field that the lighting and light spillage at Cheney/McGlynn was not contained.
“Council has had this investigated and subsequent testing indicated the spillage is within the accepted standards,” Mr Finn said.
“To appease adjoining residents, council committed $65,000 to investigate the upgrade and lighting infrastructure.
“Due to the upgrade for all lighting exceeding the original budget, the scope was reduced to all west facing lights as an initial priority.
“This reduced the overall cost to $49,000.
“Council then identified an opportunity to replace all west facing lights along with the remaining touch football field lights.
“The quote equated to $70,200 and council approached the Touch Association (Pumas) to seek support to enable this project to be delivered if funding from other sources was available,” he said.
“The association will be project manager and indicated it has the financial capacity to undertake the works.”
The new lights will be much cheaper to operate, and technology enables them to be controlled remotely.