A win-win partnership between the City of Estevan and a local volunteer sporting organization is hoped to bring some much needed improvements to the Energy City's baseball diamonds.

"The Slo Pitch Association came to us last year looking for an avenue to help develop the area, because there's no formal league looking after it. From the City's perspective, we focus on the areas that see high use, and to our knowledge that wasn't the case there," said Parks Manager Rod March.

"As of last year now, they've ramped up. They have 29 teams, and 17 are using those particular diamonds."

"If you look at the way the fee schedule works, it's about $490 for a team to play there, and with the 17 it would have been close to 10 or 11 thousand dollars. They asked for a deferral about $7,000 worth of those fees last year, under the understanding that they would take that and put it into improvements of the facility," he explained.

"They did a lot of work down there last year, in terms of helping with our crews to clean up the area and put in some benches, that sort of thing. Now they've requested to continue with that relationship, with a deferral of fees for two more years. That way they will end up with $21,000 to do a substantial project."

"We'll see how everything goes, and then we can actually start to build the diamonds like they should be built - in a cloverleaf - which right now they are not," March added.

There are a total of five diamonds, and while work is ongoing on one the rest will be still operational for the teams to play.