Kingston mayor blasts school board’s ‘lack of readiness’ over Dietz Stadium construction

Mar 07, 2024

KINGSTON, N.Y.— Mayor Steve Noble said in a statement Friday night that attempts by the Kingston City School Board to blame cost overruns and delays in the Dietz Stadium project on the city and the requests for more oversight were a result of the board’s unpreparedness.

“Not only as Mayor, but as a KCSD parent, I am extremely disappointed in the School Board’s pointless accusations and clear obfuscation of their own unpreparedness,” Noble wrote.

District officials on Oct. 11, 2019, signed away their rights to control any projects or costs for Dietz Stadium under an inter-municipal agreement considered necessary for the city to be awarded $2.5 million in state Downtown Revitalization Initiative grant funding. At that time, city officials had been using an $18.7 million figure for renovations, with the district on the hook for half of the costs that were not covered by grant funding and no way to reject increases that on June 23 put the figure at $26 million.

Board members recently said they wanted a three-month extension to decide if they wanted to pull out of the deal and gave city lawmakers a week to respond. Board President Marie Anderson said the request aims to stress that the $26 million renovation project doesn’t cost the district more than the $9 million currently estimated as the school system’s share of the cost. Common Council President Andrea Shaut said on Thursday that she is attempting to set a special council session to deal with the issue.

“This manufactured controversy is meant to skew attention from their obvious lack of readiness for this years-in-the-making project to begin. The School Board has had ample opportunity to prepare for the construction at Dietz Stadium, to secure fields for their athletics programs, and to ensure those fields were up to the standards that Kingston students deserve,” Noble said in his statement. “In fact, the agreement stated that the School District would have a representative on the City of Kingston’s Recreation Commission to weigh in on Dietz Stadium issues and keep the Board apprised, yet the Board has not had a liaison present at these meetings in years.”

Noble said he and his team have led the project from its inception and secured funding sources several times. He said he doesn’t expect additional funding to be necessary for the project but if that was the case he and his team would work with lawmakers to secure it.

“Now, as construction gets underway, we have 11th-hour finger-pointing and threats from the School Board to pull funding from this project. A project that would restore a crumbling facility for the good of its students and the entire community,” Noble said, adding that the allegations were a “waste of time.”

Anderson said a presentation by city project manager Jack Schoonmaker earlier this month was an example of the hopelessness felt by board members of cost figures and event scheduling issues that could arise due to project delays. She said the extra time would help the school find a way to continue working with the city on the project.

“We’re concerned that we might need to terminate that agreement, but we as a board decided that we really don’t want to terminate, we want to try to make it work,” she said.

Officials did not address questions involving a timetable for getting approval from the city Common Council, which is not scheduled to meet until Sept. 12, or the special meeting the Board of Education will need to schedule if the request is rejected or not addressed by the Aug. 31 deadline.

Superintendent Paul Padalino agreed that city management of the project has been detrimental to school district interests both in costs and scheduling.

“Moving forward we don’t want to be in this situation. The board would like to have input,” he said.

Padalino said the city may have to figure out ways to cut back on costs instead of approving cost increases without approval from the school district.

Prior to the agreement, scheduling and maintenance of Dietz Stadium was done through a commission that had members appointed by both the school district and city since the joint ownership agreement was reached in 1989.

Work in the current project includes new grandstands, a press box, locker rooms, turf, parking lot fencing, concession stands, a scoreboard, electric improvements and a basketball court.

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