Friday night lights fade to black
Unlike at Redondo Unioni High, football games at Peninsula are always played during the day. Photo
A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has effectively nailed the coffin shut on hopes that Palos Verdes Peninsula High School would get stadium lights on its football stadium any time soon.
The ruling marks the end of a nearly 3-year effort by parents and alumni to bring Friday night football to Peninsula High, which has never enjoyed home games under the lights. The effort electrified the community, but also brought controversy.
Principal Mitzi Cress, who supported the lights, said she was disappointed.
“I greatly appreciate the efforts and dedication of the Peninsula High parents and alumni who spearheaded the effort to bring football lights to Peninsula High,” Cress said. “Sadly, their efforts did not prevail.”
Kevin Moen, who helped lead the effort, said this week the group would be returning to area residents more than $250,000 in donations that it has held for the past two years.
“People have been very patient and allowed their donations to sit with us. Our intent is to return all our donors’ money,” Moen said. “Unfortunately the real losers are the kids who would have been the real benefactors of the lights. It would have created a real community following for them.”
In July 2010, the Palos Verdes Unified School District’s Board of Supervisors told the group of parents and alumni to raise money for the project. They ended up taking donations from more than 800 people with several contributions in excess of $20,000.
“They wanted it to be a board-based effort so the school district would understand it wasn’t just a small group of people who wanted this,” Moen said.
When the group returned to the district about a year later with a quarter of a million dollars in hand, the board suddenly pulled the plug after nearby residents voiced opposition. At the time, the group had already spent close to $100,000 in studies and architectural designs, much of it through in-kind contributions.
In Judge Burt Pines’ decision last month he found the district did not have to compensate the group for those costs. Moen said the committee members plan to cover the costs while returning all the money back to the donors.
He said the group brought the lawsuit not to necessarily recoup its losses, but to initiate a compromise process, which in the end failed to materialize. Moen said he still holds out hope the district may decide to go ahead with some form of portable stadium lights for future football games.
“It was a pretty disheartening process,” he said. ER