VIENNA — The City of Vienna re-opened its baseball, softball and T-ball fields at the Vienna City Park on Saturday, May 23. This re-opening includes the playground, pavilion and other facilities at the city park.

At the Vienna City Council’s May meeting, the council voted to close the ballfields, along with the playgrounds, pavilion, tennis and basketball courts and restrooms. At that time the council said it would reevaluate the situation before the Memorial Day holiday and might reopen the park at that time.

Vienna Mayor Tyler “TC” James said when they closed the fields they thought it was best to give them some time to see how things with the coronavirus played out. Now that everyone has been dealing with the impact of the coronavirus for a few months, there is a lot of information out there about how to keep people safe from it, so they decided to let people make their own decisions about how to keep safe while using the ballpark.

Parents and coaches were fairly evenly split on their opinions about the ball fields being closed. Some thought it was best the city closed the fields for safety reasons, while others wanted the fields open so they could play ball.

The mayor said towns in the surrounding areas have kept their ball fields open and are playing on the fields. “We gave it a chance here,” he said. “People know how to be safe and keep their distance and take precautions.” He said the council members decided to ease back into normal and see how it goes.

Clerk James said on Friday there were three games scheduled for the following week.