With two of the three largest youth sports organizations fully on board after working out a credit line for past field enhancements and maintenance, Morgan Hill Unified School District’s Board of Trustees approved an updated fee structure for reserving fields at a March 20 meeting.
“It took several working sessions with lots and lots of homework in-between for us to get where we are today,” said Spirit of MH Softball President Tom Evans, also a Morgan Hill Pony Baseball alumnus, in an email he sent to his participating families. “In the end, the field use rates for Spirit and Pony will not be going up if we continue to maintain the fields to the high standards that we set for ourselves.”
Evans’ message came in stark contrast to a Jan. 23 school board meeting, where Spirit and Pony members voiced heartfelt opposition to the district’s proposal that shifted from a daily to an hourly rate for facility usage by area sports organizations. Teams had previously been paying a $15 daily rate to reserve district fields.
The five school board trustees who cast votes on the new pay scale (Mary Patterson, Gino Borgioli, Donna Ruebusch, David Gerard and Ron Woolf) were in agreement that the restructured deal was mutually beneficial to the district, which was looking to recoup maintenance and upkeep fees for its fields and establish an account to upgrade and replace facilities. Meanwhile, the local sports leagues wanted to keep their registration fees affordable to participating families. They also want to be fairly credited for years of field upgrades, which they financed, and field maintenance, which their volunteers have done over decades, according to the leagues’ representatives.
“I think (the fact that) we do not have 100 very concerned parents of student-athletes tonight in the room is evidence that the district has in good faith reached out and really tried to understand the specific concern,” said Gerard, who had previously been against any type of pay increase for local sports organizations wanting to use district fields for their practices and games.
Alicia Hoffman, a board member for Orchard Valley Toros Soccer (formerly Orchard Valley Youth Soccer League) who is also a parent and coach of a competitive team, was the lone speaker at Tuesday night’s meeting. However, unlike Spirit and Pony that worked out in-kind agreements (credit for past services and monies used to enhance fields) to alleviate usage increases, Hoffman expressed concern on the impact for OVToros and its participating members.
“We do still have some concerns and do think the rates will still be a hardship for a lot of our families,” said Hoffman, who also wanted to know how the district planned to re-invest the additional funds into the facilities. “We just don’t feel that the rates you’re asking are commensurate with the quality of the fields we’re receiving, and if that’s going to change we’d like to know what you are going to be putting into it.”
The district’s plan includes a three-year incremental pay structure from 40 percent of the overall increase the first year, to 70 percent the second year, to full cost by the third year. However, the rates were reduced from the initial proposal back in December 2017. In addition, the rates provide a 50 percent discount for nonprofits, an additional 25 percent discount “for organizations that have constructed and continue to maintain playfields via the in-kind policy,” according to the district report. The plan recommended by district staff and approved by the board march 20 also included “pre-approved in-kind work to offset the facility use fees.”
While Hoffman described the in-kind payback and future field investments as “a win-win for our partnership,” she was skeptical of the district’s intent on improving the fields used by OVToros.
“In three years’ time, I understand it’s incrementally, we will be paying roughly the same, if not more than, what we pay currently at the Outdoor Sports Complex, and there we have lights and turf,” said Hoffman, adding that if the new fee structure was approved that OVToros would be “forced to re-evaluate how often we use (district) fields and may go elsewhere.”
Before the board’s approval, Patterson asked district staff to confirm the fee reductions from the initial proposal to the new rate structure. In doing so, it was demonstrated that a $19.57 per hour proposal for field use was lowered to $3.75 per hour at elementary and middle school sites and $12.64 at high school sites. Another example came for soccer practice fields, which went down from $16.14 per hour for a nonprofit in the December proposal to $5.39 per hour in the updated version.
“That’s a significant savings,” Patterson said.
Board President Tom Arnett left the meeting early and was not present during the facilities vote, while Trustee Teresa Murillo recused herself from the vote due to a conflict of interest for being active in one of the impacted sports teams.
Along with the new pay rates, which go into effect beginning July 1 and then increase the following two years on the same date, all field reservations for district facilities are made through a third-party vendor called Facilitron. The online facility rental software platform allows sports clubs to make reservations for MHUSD fields through the online booking agent instead of going through the athletic director or representative at each individual site. The district’s contract with Facilitron stipulates that “the facility user will be charged a service fee of 5 percent of their use fee and the district will pay 5 percent of the fee to Facilitron which will be deducted from the fees collected,” according to a district report.
