Residents who live adjacent to Mount Vernon School expressed concerns about property values and quality of life during a community meeting concerning plans to light the school’s athletic field.
During the Oct. 24 meeting, Mount Vernon Woods homeowners whose property backs up to Ron Hill Field said they didn’t want to view the lights or hear noise from the field during night games or practices.
The school applied to the city of Sandy Springs for a conditional use permit for the lights, which requires two community meetings. The next meeting will be at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 30, at Sandy Springs City Hall.
Homeowners asked why they should suffer from losing quality of life and reduced property values for the school’s benefit. Residents complained the noise from football games already disturbs them, at times making it difficult to hear what’s said by someone standing next to them.
Head of School Kristy Lundstrom said they want to work out compromises to minimize the impact on the neighborhoods. She said the school offered compromises to limit the months, days, and times when the lights would be used. Audio would only be used 10 times during the year. Four of those times would be Friday nights during high school football season.
Lundstrom said the school offered to discuss increasing security, the buffer between the properties, increasing sound barriers, and limiting field rentals.
Residents questioned the rental of the school’s athletic field, saying they were concerned Mount Vernon School would increase rentals and add to the disruption of their lives.
Lundstrom said the school is willing to compromise and limit rentals to youth organizations as they have been doing for years. When homeowners questioned how they could be sure the school would hold to that promise, Lundstrom suggested having the city add conditions for the approval of their conditional use permit for the lights.
Mount Vernon School Board Chair Carl Streck said lighting the football games is a small aspect of the school’s application for lights.
“The bigger need is we send kids all over Sandy Springs, all over Atlanta, playing different sports because we don’t have practice space. So we need practice space,” Streck said.
Lights will allow practices to be held later, increasing the hours available to practice.
The school wants students to practice on the campus, which Streck said should make it safer and not create more traffic on local roads.
Several residents questioned how any conditions could be enforced after hours when practices and games are held as city code inspectors won’t be available while the complaint was happening. They said the enforcement process places the burden on the neighbors to enforce the conditions.
Mount Vernon School created a website (mvcampusproject.org) to provide information on the history of the property, city ordinances, and agreements with neighbors.
The link to the school property’s history website was incorrect in a previous version of this article.
