The Mount Vernon School couldn’t reach a compromise with the neighborhoods near its campus, so the school renewed its plan to get a permit from the city to install lights on its main athletic field.
Residents who attended a community meeting Monday night at the school repeated complaints made at a similar meeting in February about late-night noise and light spillage from the field.
Monday night’s meeting was the first of two required community meetings to apply for a conditional use permit to install four light poles to allow athletic teams to practice after dark.
Head of School Kristy Lundstrom said the school renewed its request after they failed to reach a compromise with two of the four neighboring homeowners associations on hours, days, and months when using the lights would be allowed. Mount Vernon Woods and Aria West held discussions with the school, while two other neighborhoods did not participate.
A vegetative buffer plan for around the school campus was criticized as one neighbor said it would take 15 years or more for trees to begin filling the gaps. Until then, lights from the field would be visible in neighboring homes, especially from upper floors. Vegetation would not reduce noise that reaches the homes, residents said.
Alan Wieczynski of Breedlove Land Planning said the buffered would include a variety of evergreen and magnolia plantings and shorter tree specimens. He said plantings will be 10 to 12 feet tall.
The school has an agreement with the Mount Vernon Woods neighborhood not to install lights until the fall of 2025. That is the earliest Lundstrom said the school plans to light the athletic field.
City zoning regulations allow lights at athletic fields, Lundstrom said. The regulations limit how late the lights can stay on, with Mount Vernon School limited to 10:30 p.m.
An Aria West Homeowners Association board member asked if the conditional use permit would allow events on the field seven days a week, 365 days a year, with lights and sound on until 10:30 p.m.
Lundstrom said the lights would be on that late 10 times a year for home football games and a few other events. Using the lights on weekdays would enable them to extend practices past 5 p.m. during months when it gets darker earlier. The students need to get home to rest and recover, so they would not practice late on weekdays, she said.
She said the school was open to compromise on times, days, and months of using the lights. However, the installation of lights on the main athletic field was non-negotiable.
Lundstrom said the main athletic field’s sound system would only be used during games and not during practices.
A sound engineer will come to the campus during a home game this fall to measure audio levels at the property lines, Lundstrom said.
The next steps are for the school to apply for a conditional use permit with the city and hold a second community meeting, with the date, time and location to be announced. Tentative hearings are expected before the Sandy Springs Planning and Zoning Commission in December, with a city council hearing in January 2025.
Community members can share their opinions with Mount Vernon School online.
