Touchdown! PZC OK's Athletic Field Sponsor Signage

Coaches and boosters, parents and administrators, even town and school officials came en masse to the Planning and Zoning Commission public hearing Tuesday to support a sponsor panel and signage program for schools and municipal athletic fields.

And while there were opponents, including Carla Donnarummo, whose 1960 graduating class donated a scoreboard to , the zoning regulation text amendment passed unanimously after an hour of discussion. The matter had previously been discussed in an August PZC meeting.

“We’re not selling out or compromising the integrity of this town,” Schools superintendent Leanne Masterjoseph told the commission. “We’re coming up with new and innovative ways to raise money.  The days of car washes and bake sales doing it all are long gone.”

With support from the town’s finance and recreation boards, the plan devised by the board of education, cleared its last hurdle. Now, schools operations manager Bill King said, the plan is to erect the new scoreboard and fill it with sponsor signage, just in time for the annual Thanksgiving Day football game.

“That’s the plan,” King said. “We’re ready to go.”

According to town planner Keith Brynes, the athletic field signs will not be able to be seen from the street or from residences and will require site plan approval. The four commission members seated Tuesday had some concerns about aesthetics—especially given the conservation commission’s thumbs-down on the proposal; it decried the commercialism aspect. But that did not stop members from recognizing the need for creative revenue generation.

“This is a new source for revenue generation and I applaud (the schools) for it,” said member Gardner Young. “Reading the business news, they say the new normal is you have to pull out all the stops. This is that.”

The program is expected to pay for itself the first year, and raise around $14, 000 each year after.

King said Stonington is now the first community in the region that will feature sponsor panels on its fields.

He said that a number of other schools across Connecticut and Rhode Island have reached out to him for advice on how to do the same. And, he said the company he’s working with, Side Effects, has been meeting with a number of other southern New England school districts to get the ball rolling.

The high school football and other athletics field sponsor panel program is big in the south, King said, but hasn’t been in the northeast. “Not until now,” he said.

King said he expects the new board to go up shortly and the signs will follow.