WATERVILLE — Mayor Michael Morris said Thursday the city’s administration is not currently considering moving Purnell Wrigley Field, which has been a source of conflict for some of its neighbors.

Morris’s statement comes after Carrie LeVan, a Waterville resident, posted a petition to keep the baseball field in the city in a Waterville community Facebook group. The post received more than 60 comments, most of which supported the petition, and has been shared more than 200 times since Wednesday.

Last month, while city officials were reviewing the agreement with the Alfond Youth and Community Center at a City Council meeting, councilors Spencer Krigbaum, D-Ward 5 and Scott Beale, D-Ward 6, said the city might consider moving the field in the future.

More than a decade ago, Purnell Wrigley, a $1.4 million replica of Chicago’s Wrigley Field, replaced a sandlot in a densely-populated residential neighborhood off Cool Street with a turf field, a public address building, dugouts, lights and bathrooms.

While many in the area love the field because it gets kids outside and offers accessible baseball programming through the AYCC, others remember the 2022 Cal Ripken World Series, which neighbors, supporters of the field, city officials and AYCC officials agree was poorly managed.

The event brought a massive volume of visitors to the neighborhood, causing parking issues and inconveniences for residents, while breaking trust with some neighbors.

Since then, records of 911 calls to the field show that some neighbors have continued to complain about the lights and noises from the field, and that tensions between these neighbors and people using the field have escalated.

City officials recently revisited its agreement with the AYCC that outlined acceptable usage of the field and made concessions to neighbors.

The field’s lights go off at 9 p.m. every night — earlier than the city requires — and the AYCC has limited use of its PA system and avoids playing music over speakers during programming.

The petitioners also asked that the city provide “greater opportunities for transparency” before restricting the use of the field.

Morris said in his statement the new agreement “aims to ensure appropriate accessibility while addressing concerns within the neighborhood.”

“We hear the community’s desire to find an alternative field,” Krigbaum said at the March 17 City Council meeting. “If we decide to go down that route, this is a multi-year conversation to get to that point, but that’s not saying that we aren’t going to. I would love to see that. I think that would solve a lot of these problems.”

Councilors at the March 17 meeting said the decision to move the field would take years, and since then Morris and Councilor Rebecca Green, D-Ward 4, said it’s not something the city is seriously considering.

In Morris’ Thursday statement, he wrote that in the new agreement “neither side achieved everything they desired — that’s the essence of compromise.”

The agreement is in effect for the next two years. During that time, the city’s new Parks and Recreation Committee will consider how the city uses recreational resources in Waterville. Green said the idea of improving a second field in Waterville to better distribute programming has come up.