Dear School Board and City Council Members,

Thanks to all of you for your thoughtful consideration of our playing
fields situation in Menlo Park. As a parent of two children in our
public schools and a youth coach in several sports I have seen first
hand the frustration of playing and practicing on poor fields, not
having field space available for our children or worse, having to cut
children out of youth programs due to lack of field space. So, I
believe this is an important issue.

My "day job" is as a coach at Stanford. In that position and in
similar coaching positions in other parts of the country I have been
involved in the development of both natural grass and artificial
surface fields. I believe that our school board and city council
should be very cautious in accepting research on either type of field
as much of it is generated by people within the industry. In fact
the newer artificial surface fields have only recently (last 5 years)
been installed in great numbers around the country and therefore some
of the issues haven't been studied fully.

I have discussed at length the environmental, usage and cost issues
with our assistant athletic director, Dave Schinski, who has taken
the lead in developing both types of fields on our campus and in
other locations. We believe that there are environmental issues that
are difficult to weigh against each other. We also believe that for
playability and safety the newest types of artificial surface are
very good. The obvious negative is up front cost.

I have attached a document which outlines the issues and some of the
positives and negatives. As a coach and a parent I am not an
automatic advocate for either type of surface. We do have some
excellent natural grass fields on the Stanford campus. But we are
able to spend the funds necessary to build championship level grass
fields, limit usage and maintain them with field experts. The cost
of that maintenance is approximately $40,000 per field per year.

In a perfect world a beautiful natural grass field would be an
outstanding situation. Unfortunately, given the number of children
and sports programs and the limited space available I don't believe
that to be a realistic option. Therefore, I believe that an
artificial surface is definitely worthy of your consideration.

Best regards,

Bret

-- 
Bret Simon
Men's Soccer Coach
Stanford University