Local families with children involved in Morgan Hill sports leagues—some spanning three generations—had every reason to be upset with school district officials and board trustees after sitting around for nearly three hours to be heard Tuesday night.
However, already fueled by frustration over Morgan Hill Unified School District staff’s proposal to significantly increase their respective leagues’ facility use fees that they say would, in turn, raise their registration costs, those attendees did not let their emotions get the best of them.
Instead, they presented a history lesson to the district leaders and board members on how much time, money and labor their volunteers have put into constructing, maintaining and then later upgrading the school fields over decades. These are the same fields that they played on as youth growing up in South County and that their children and grandchildren now play on as participants in leagues such as PONY Baseball, Spirit Softball and Orchard Valley Toros Soccer.
Instead of dismissing any notion of increasing the field use fees (something that hasn’t been done since 2009) from the $15 daily fee, more than two dozen speakers, some whom brought their children wearing league uniforms, simply asked the board to defer the vote on the district’s proposal so all parties could sit down for a second time and hash out a mutually beneficial plan.
And that’s exactly what happened at the Jan. 23 meeting, where trustees voted 6-0 to postpone the facility use pay schedule proposal until one of the two meetings in March. (Trustee Ron Woolf was absent from the meeting.) Some trustees said they needed additional information and time to make a more educated decision while others wanted district staff and league reps to have further discussions.
Trustee Gino Borgioli, who previously was in favor of the district’s proposal after it was first introduced at a December meeting with no league reps in attendance, admitted that he was “ill-informed” about the issue.
“What I heard from parents is they almost exclusively maintain and manicure the fields with their volunteer system and they expend the money to repair the fields. I haven’t seen or heard anything about what we do as a district,” Borgioli said. “We’re doing a major wrong to the community.”
Local families speak out against increased costs
Like many of the community speakers, local resident Susie Tulowitzki, a public school teacher and mother of a young girl who plays OV Toros soccer and Spirit softball, asked the board to think about the impact the increased fees would have “on the district’s most vulnerable students” and on local nonprofit youth sports.
“Do you really want to sideline some of our children? Do you really want to see them make their last out?” Tulowitzki asked. “By approving field usage fees to the magnitude of thousands of percents for leagues like Spirit and PONY, this is exactly what you’ll be doing.”
The district has been charging a $15 per day, per facility fee to use school site fields. However, school officials are proposing a steady rate hike over the next three years with an hourly rate climbing to as much as $38.58 for nonprofit leagues and $77.17 for commercial use, according to a breakdown of the latest figures produced by the district.
Tom Andrade, a member of PONY baseball for more than 20 years, explained how league volunteers back in the 1970s revitalized the large abandoned field on the backside of Britton Middle School, where they built several baseball diamonds. The district staff proposal now wants to raise the fees for them to use those same fields.
Andrade also outlined how the league paid to put in turf, sprinklers and backstops at the old Burnett Elementary, and how they did similar work at El Toro Elementary and Live Oak HIgh School as PONY expanded, all coming at no charge to the school district.
“That is what we did in 70s, 80s and 90s. Today, that work continues,” Andrade said. “That same thing is going on with Spirit at San Martin.”
After public comments prior to the board’s decision to table the issue, Superintendent Steve Betando immediately praised the young athletes, their families and coaches for their respect and patience during the board discussion. He apologized for not reaching the item until late into the meeting, which began at 6:15pm and got to facility use about 8:45pm.
“There’s nothing that was said up here about the value of these sports to character, to assisting with the kids staying focused on school, to an outlet, to social development, to leadership, it’s all there. I totally agree with that,” Betando said.
Who maintains the fields?
District staff estimated their annual facility operation costs at $1.5 million and capital replacement cost (based on a 10-year term) at $3.2 million for a $4.7 million total. Assistant Superintendent Kirsten Perez explained those are some of the figures that are put into a new state formula used to calculate how much they should charge per hour for fields to recover costs.
However, local resident Mike White said he’s been involved with PONY Baseball for more than 30 years. He took exception to the district’s operation and maintenance cost claims.
“The maintenance of these fields has not been done by your district,” White said. “Not a single backstop, mound or home plate, dirt, sod or anything was been put in by any of you guys.”
The district contracted with Facilitron, an online facility rental software platform, in January 2017 to allow sports clubs to make reservations for MHUSD fields through the online booking agent, according to the Dec. 5 agenda. District staff then asked Facilitron “to provide a comparison of the district’s costs for facility maintenance and capital replacement compared to actual facility use fees generated.”
According to Facilitron’s presentation, the district “has been subsidizing community groups over $300,000 (per) year in facility use.” The rate increase would help “to provide for the maintenance, restoration and replacement of facilities,” according to Facilitron.
No date or location was scheduled for the school district staff to meet again with league officials.
