Waterbury School Begins Construction Without Permission, City Reacts

It's not often that you find yourself in the center of a controversy, but here I am.

I've lived in the Town Plot section of Waterbury for most of my life. We live near Holy Cross High School. I am a Holy Cross Alumni. Class of '87 represent!

A couple of months ago, while leafing through alumni news and requests for donations, something caught my attention. Holy Cross was going to majorly reconfigure their athletic fields, which would allow them to build a football field and host football and soccer games on their home turf.

If memory serves, there was a request for a donation, but I don't really recall if there was a timeline laid out in this initial information.

So, honestly, I was kind of surprised when the heavy equipment rolled in over the Summer, and the work started. First, they cleared off a patch of earth near the top of the hill, and built a press box. Then, a new scoreboard appeared in the field. Just the other day, goalposts were erected in the field. In the photo above, you can see the new Press Box between the light post and the red vehicle. In the photo below, you can see the new goal post.

Well, according to a story by the Waterbury Republican-American, Holy Cross went ahead and built these things without jumping through the proper hoops. Specifically, the press box and scoreboard exceed the local height restrictions by about five feet.

I received the following letter in the mail on Saturday:

The gist of the letter is, "Heyyyyy, sorry about building those new things on our field. Sorry they block your view of Town Plot IGA and Town Plot Auto, but if you want to talk about it, come chat with us and the city officials we should have asked if this was cool before we hired the crews, September 21st in the Aldermanic Chambers. The city required us to send this to you, and thanks for your anticipated support."

Then, this morning, I got an e-mail invitation to attend the opening of "Alumni Field" on Saturday September 10th. Holy Cross will be playing Kennedy at 1PM. I guess they got a hall pass for the height infringement.

I sit in the position of power! Should I choose to let the higher scoreboard be, so the more height-challenged citizens can more easily see how bad the Crusaders are whooping up on those dastardly Hearts? Or should I shut my mouth and let the Rep-Am, WATR, WWCO, WJMJ, WVIT, WTNH, and WFSB camera and broadasting crews get a better view?

Heavy lies the crown.