DELBARTON – The Delbarton Kiwanis Club can now move forward with partial completion of one of the five project components of their new $100,000 Delbarton Babe Ruth League Baseball and Softball park construction project after an $8,000 donation to the project by the Mingo County Commission on Wednesday.

W. C. Totten, president of the Delbarton Kiwanis Club, made a presentation on the project’s needs to the county commissioners at their regular June meeting Wednesday.

The project has been on-going for close to a year. The plan is to build two regulation size baseball fields that will be used by both the Delbarton Babe Ruth Baseball League and the Burch High School Girls Softball team. The fields are being built on the site of the former James Blevins Football Field, the home for many years of the Burch High School and middle school football teams.

At present, neither the town’s Babe Ruth baseball youth, nor the Burch High School girls softball team have a permanent home to play on. That leaves them as the only county municipality without such facilities.

“This is a project that we feel very strongly committed to,” said Totten earlier in the week. “We in the Kiwanis have been working on this for just about a year now. We’ve owned the property since 1986 and the project started in mid 2009. We’ve made some progress, bur it seems that every time we’ve taken a step forward, something has happened to move us two steps back. And to that degree, it’s been a little disappointing not only to us, but to prospective supporters of the project as well.”

Totten detailed how the Kiwanis had leased the property over their years of ownership to the Mingo County Board of Education for the use of the field by the Burch High School softball team. The Kiwanis decided to pursuer the transformation of the longtime football field into a baseball and softball park that would provide not only great facilities for the youth of the Delbarton community, but would also help in attracting people to come and play sectional and regional tournaments in the town as well.

The project got started in earnest when the club tore down the old football bleachers and band platform and had the field graded and cleared. This past spring the field was

seeded and had grass coming in. The project was hindered though by the club’s inability to reach agreement to purchase one tract of private property adjacent to the park.

“Financially, we just couldn’t afford the price that was being asked for the additional property. So we’ve moved along without it,” said Totten.

The Kiwanis had several companies commit to helping with certain portions of the project. But, as Totten explained, “In a couple of those instances, personnel in positions of authority who made those commitments moved on to other places and as a result, their successors didn’t follow through. That created other setbacks.”

Another problem occur-red when the club found that it was going to have to replace several of the power poles located on the field due to the fact that the bottoms of them had rotted. This was an expense that was not foreseen.

“That expense added almost $11,000 to the cost of the project – funds we did not and do not have at this time. thus we haven’t made any progress in replacing the poles.

The latest setback for the Kiwanis project was the recent flooding in the Pigeon Creek and Delbar-ton areas.

“There was two feet of water that covered the whole field, including the existing dressing room facility on the property”, Totten said. “While the water didn’t do irreparable damage, it left a lot of mud on the back area of the field and left our field drainage system stopped up, thus a lot of water and mud have not been able to adequately drain off.”

Totten noted that the water did leave some debris on the field and removing it is a goal of the Kiwanis “Clean Up Party” community work session. Earlier efforts to remove debris created another problem – a truck moving some of the debris backed into one of the aforementioned electric poles leaving a set of electric wires lying across one area of the field.

Now the Kiwanis are seeking to move forward quickly in order to prevent additional delays.

“The project has fallen behind and is not where we need it to be” said Totten. “The Burch girls softball team has already lost out due to the delays and the Delbarton Babe Ruth League apparently will lose out this season as well in terms of having a home field to play on.”

Totten says the project lacks five components — fencing fields and backstops, building four dugouts, adding a two-story press box, new lighting for the entire park, new light poles and infield preparation for both fields. These projects carry with them a total cost of $101, 300.

While the cost to finish the field is staggering, Totten believes that it is not an insurmountable amount to gather.

“We’ve done a lot of work and, we’ve had a lot of help to get to the point we are,” Totten said. “The Mingo County Commis-sion, Judge Michael Thornsbury and the Judge’s Work Crew, Coal-Mac, Arch Mineral and the Mingo County Board of Education and Superinten-dent Dwight Dials, along with several other businesses have all contributed donations and in-kind services to the park development efforts.

“ Mr. Dials has been extremely supportive of the project and has been over to the field on several occasions. He attempted to help us obtain the additional property.”

Totten also noted the school system had made a donation to the project and the BOE had agreed to the Kiwanis request for an increase in the lease of the fields from $1,000 annually to $5,000. beginning next year.”

The $8,000 donation by the county this past Wednesday will be coupled with that of the Mingo County Board of Education and go towards the installation of fencing for one field’s backstop and field and the outfield fencing for the other. He stated that while the $23,146 in fencing will not finish the fencing component of the project, it will serve two major purposes.

“First, it will let people and businesses within our area see visible, tangible progress on the project. This in turn will hopefully spur them to donate to the project as they see it moving from plans to reality.” Totten said. “Secondly, the fencing will keep four wheel riders from riding on the field and tearing it up which has been a problem in the recent past.”

“We appreciate the help that the Mingo County Commission has been to us, particularly Commissioner David Baisden who has not only supported us with this donation but also with other types of help in the past.”

Baisden told Totten and the assembled citizenry at Wednesday’s meeting the commission supports the project whole-heartedly. “We want to help with this project. And in the future, we will do more. But right now, this flood clean-up has hit us hard and is continuing to do so. But we’ll do all we can to help with the project.”

Totten said the Delbarton Kiwanis is still seeking assistance from corporate entities, governmental ag-encies and private citizens in order to complete the facility as soon as possible.