By GRAHAM BROOKS / Staff Writer

HELENA–The Helena High School athletic facilities will soon be getting some new additions in the coming weeks and months.

The Helena City Council approved the expenditures of up to $100,000 from the education fund to build batting cages for the Helena baseball and softball teams, in addition to the purchase of aluminum skirting to go on the back of the football stadium grandstands.

These were projects that were put on hold last year because the funds were not available, but Helena Mayor Mark Hall said that there is now a comfortable amount of funding to complete the projects.

“This is one of the things that we didn’t have the funds at the time but the fund has sufficiently built in there that we can take some of that money and add batting cages back to the project for the high school baseball and softball teams,” said Hall. “Also, we wanted to finish the grand stands. At the bottom of the stands they’ll put a skirting and a high school logo or something at the bottom. It also keeps people from being able to go under the stands during a game.”

Helena High School is entering its second year as a school and athletic teams such as the baseball and softball teams were at a disadvantage by not having batting cages available.

Despite this disadvantage, the Helena Huskies baseball team made it to the state championship where they came up a little bit short to finish as state runner-ups.

Helena Councilman Mike Jones wanted to make sure people understood that this expense was not coming out of the general fund.

“I would like to reiterate for the minutes what the mayor mentioned that this is coming from the one cent school fund,” said Jones.

The aluminum skirting for the back of the football stadium was approved to add aesthetic value and safety to the stadium during the games.