Warning issued to gravel pit operator

At Tuesday night's Woodstock City Council session a stop-work order was threatened, if the gravel pit operator doesn't come up with a solid plan for developing the site along U.S. 14 that is to be the home of a baseball stadium and the County fairgrounds.

The Woodstock City Council is frustrated with the slow progress on the rest of the site, after they rushed to approve the gravel extraction request of Merryman Aggregate a year ago. The Council acknowledged that it had altered its usual approval plan by granting the extraction approval with 51 conditions, rather than requiring that the conditions be met before approving Merryman's request.

Now the Council is finding out why it shouldn't have done that, and perhaps the lesson has been learned. I don't think I was the only one who questioned the rush.

On Tuesday night the phrase "gravel pit" was used. This should create a huge yellow flag at City Hall. The extraction operation there is not supposed to be a "pit."

But when you look at the new "mountains" east of Woodstock, don't you have to wonder just where all that dirt is coming from? Is it really coming just from scraping the ground down to the rock that Merryman wants? And just when will those "mountains" be leveled? Or will they?

They seem to be about where Merryman would like to move the stadium and fairgrounds. They will have to be leveled, unless ball players are going to get a lot of exercise chasing flyballs downhill and then running back up to throw out a runner. And will a hill climb replace the demolition derby at the County Fair?

The City Council established deadlines for specific development actions by Merryman. One Councilman (Dick Ahrens, I believe) suggested that the City might issue a stop-work order on the extraction business, if Merryman doesn't get cracking with progress. That's Progress, not just Talk.

The threat of a stop-work order did not go un-noticed by Merryman's representative, and I'm sure the Councilmen didn't miss his response that I picked up on as, "Oh, yeah? See you in court, if you try to stop us."