5.8. SR 06-24-2002River
MEMORANDUM
TO:
FROPI:
DATE:
Mayor and Council
Pat Klaers, C'j~_~dm~strator
June 24, 2002
SUBJECT: Discussion on City Involvement with School Fields
Item 5.8.
For many years field scheduling and maintenance were never any problem. The school
district was the only unit of government that had facilities and all the scheduling and
maintenance was done by the school district (community education) and youth associations.
The community recreation organization was established in 1992 and this organization
eventually took over the coordination of field scheduling with each host city being
responsible for maintenance. The school district no longer maintained their fields during the
summer and any fees that were collected from the associations to offset expenses went to
the host communities.
Today the situation is more complex than in the early days and when managed under
community recreation. Today community recreation no longer exists and cities are offering
and coordinating recreation activities. Today most cities have some of their own fields and
even the VFW has soccer fields available in Otsego. Additionally, coordination with more
than one association per sport for field scheduling has become an issue.
Maintenance and scheduling of school facilities came to a head this spring when United
Soccer wanted to use school facilities that were not available. Due to growth in the Three
Rivers Soccer Association (TRSA), they had scheduled all the available fields. In prior years
there were a sufficient number of fields in and around Elk River to accommodate everyone.
What made the field scheduling issue in 2002 even more difficult was the past relationship
with the TRSA, whereby this group has invested funds into field development and soccer
goals and United, as a newer organization, has not made this same investment. Also, it
should be noted that fields were available in other communities within the school district but
were not being used because they either were not being maintained by the host city and/or
they were not in the best location.
The timing of this conflict over school field scheduling happening this year was unfortunate
as this is the first year of Elk River's city recreation program. City recreation assumed many
of the existing policies of community recreation. City scheduling of the school fields resulted
in policy questions from the School Board at our joint May 23, 2002 meeting. The City
Council briefly further discussed this issue on May 28 and generally the feeling was that the
city is busy enough maintaining and scheduling its own facilities and parks, it doesn't want
the potential liability for scheduling and maintaining the school facilities, and it doesn't want
the "headache" of scheduling and prioritizing field use for more than one association per
sport.
City staff desires to gct out of the school field maintenance and scheduling business for a
number of reasons. One reason is that sometimes the school district does field
improvements or weed spraying without prior communication and notice to the city and this
causes us problems with scheduling. Another issue and reason is that the fees received from
the youth associations never covers the time, material, and equipment involved in
maintenance. Finally, and most importantly, maintaining school fields limits the maintenance
of city parks. No longer maintaining school fields will free up a significant amount of time
and equipment that can be used on other park projects.
The school district has the equipment and the expertise to do field maintenance. They do
this work in the spring and in the fall. The school district can receive most of the funds for
maintenance from the youth associations and hire summer help to maintain their own
facilities for use by the associations. Therefore, children from throughout the school district
can be using school district scheduled and maintained facilities. If the funds received from
the association are not enough to cover the school's expenses, then the school district and
the associations need to work things out. This change does not cause any real extra work for
the youth associations as they already work with community education on scheduling of
school facilities in other communities.
In summary, reasons for this proposed change include:
· Community recreation disbanding and changing to city recreation...there is no
longer one group doing all the coordination of all the facilities and this is now done
by individual cities and the school district.
· It makes no sense for the city to be scheduling and maintaining school facilities.
· It makes no sense for the school district to be involved in setting city scheduling
policies
· Reduces city liability (i.e. injuries taking place on school fields that the city schedules
and maintains).
· The city desires to use its summer help and equipment to do more work in city
parks.., this is a true concern as the city will soon be scheduling and maintaining the
softball complex.
· School improvements to school fields are sometimes unpredictable and this has
caused scheduling and maintenance problems for the city. This should be less of a
problem with the school both scheduling and maintaining their own property
It is recommended that the city send notice to the school district and the youth associations
that the city will no longer be scheduling and maintaining the school district fields.
S/council/pat / schoolfieldmaint
BALL FIELDS
City Fields
Oak Knoll 1
Oak Knoll 2
Oak Knoll 3
YAC 1 Orono 1
YAC 2 Orono 2
YAC 3 Orono 3
YAC 4 Orono 4
Kuss Field
School Fields
Varsity Salk 101 Lincoln 1
Jr. Varsity Salk 102 Lincoln 2
SFBL 1 Salk 103 Parker 1
SFBL 7 Salk 104 Parker 2
Vandenberge 3 Salk 105 Handke 1
Vandenberge 4 Salk 106 Handke 2
Vandenberge 5 Meadowvale 1
Vandenberge 6 Meadowvale 2
Note:
One Lincoln field has been removed and one is not available due to maintenance.
SOCCER FIELDS
City Fields
Oak Knoll 9
Oak Knoll 10
Joplin Park
School Fields
Salk 1
Salk 2
Salk 3
Salk 4
Salk 5
Note:
Salk 6
Salk 7
Meadowvale 1
Meadowvale 2
Joplin Park is not designated as a soccer field but is currently being used due to a shortage of fields in
Elk River.
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SOCCER
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MEMORANDUM
TO:
Pat Klaers
FROM:
DATE:
SUBJECT:
Michele Bergh
June 12, 2002
Scheduling and Maintenance of School District Fields
Our department begins scheduling for summer youth associations in April each year. We
complete a master schedule by the first week in May for all ball fields and soccer fields in Elk
River. Once this schedule is complete, the information is given to Youth Baseball, Girls
Fastpitch Softball, TRSA, and our Parks and Streets Department. The season begins the
first week in May for all these groups and our department handles all changes and additions
throughout the summer season. We spend approximately 7 hours each week coordinating
field needs for these groups. The City provides the service of scheduling and maintenance
for school fields in Elk River beginning the first week in May and running undl school
resumes in the fall. The youth associations are typically done with their seasons by the end
of july so we see very litde use in August. There are seven City ball fields and two City
soccer fields we schedule and maintain year-round and 22 District ball fields and nine
District soccer fields we schedule and maintain for 3-4 months a year. Although we
schedule City fields year-round, they are primarily used from May-July. As you can see 75%
of the fields we are taking care of are District fields. We will also have 5 additional fields to
schedule next year at the Adult Softball Complex, which will add to our workload. It would
simplify the process for our office if we were only scheduling City fields and allow us to
spend more time programming for our community as well as developing additional facilities.
While there would be some adjustment for the youth associations, they are already
contacting Community Education for their field needs in Zimmerman, Otsego, and the
initial master scheduling of Rogers. Rogers does the scheduling of changes and additions
once the season is underway. I believe in the long run, the youth associations would benefit
from this change, as we would have more time to develop additional quality facilities.
We have had conflict arise over our policies and it is difficult to enforce a policy that we
have when some of the facilities are not ours. This issue arose this spring and the District
questioned whether our policy is fair to everyone and they were not sure they supported only
recognizing one association per sport/activity and population served. If we were only
scheduling our own fields, our policies would be much easier to enforce. This would also
allow the District to set their own policies as they see fit.
While we are scheduling District facilities from May-August, we truly don't have authority
over these sites. The school must okay all uses scheduled during the school year. There
have also been issues with school maintenance needs throughout the summer. Every season
we have sprinklers going during scheduled practices and games. We have been told that the
times this is occurring cannot be adjusted. The grass at the various schools are treated with
chemicals and we don't receive any notification of when they will be spraying so the children
will go out to play and may not notice right away that there are small signs saying to keep off
the grass. This is a health concern as well as a scheduling conflict. Recently, txvo major
fields were seeded and we received this information after the fact and were then told to keep
everyone off the fields for at least two weeks. This created conflicts with scheduling and
extra work for our department to call coaches and let them know they couldn't practice or
have games and then to reschedule everything.
As you can sce, there are many reasons that support the City providing scheduling and
maintenance of their facilities and the District providing scheduling and maintenance of
theirs. Our department feels that this change would help alleviate some of the workload we
currently have and allow us to provide the same level of service for new facilities being
completed and the additional responsibility of managing the Adult Softball Complex. We
are requesting that this change take place after the end of the current season.
City
TO:
FROM:
DATE:
SUBJECT:
Pat Klaers
MEMORANDUM
Phil Hals, Street/Park Superintendent
June 13, 2002
City Maintenance of District 728 Athletic Field
Listed below are City costs for maintenance of school district fields:
Labor:
Spring set up - 80 hours ~ $30.001hr [] $2400.00*
Daily Maintenance - 20 hrslweek - 4 weeks ~ $30.001hr = $2400.00*
Daily Maintenance - 20 hrs/week - 6 weeks ~ $16.00/hr [] $1920.00**
Maintenance equipment costs 280 hrs ~ $5.001hr [] $1400.00
Material Costs:
Soccer field paint (annual supply) $1200.00
Ball field chalk (annual supply) $200.00
Estimated annual City cost: $9520.00
Other Concerns:
Communication between scheduling personnel and maintenance personnel
is the most important consideration in providing good field maintenance. In
the past, most of the complaints from users were about field coordination
and not the quality of maintenance.
*Regular employees
** Seasonal employees