City underscores rules for teams’ use of parks
IMPERIAL — This city continues to be vigilant with the youth and adult sport teams that are having condition-only team practices at parks here.
While any citizen can freely play at any park or open space here, the city is making the organizations using parks for team practices are paying their dues via facility use agreements.
As of Tuesday, Imperial City Council has approved facility use agreements for four teams.
The four teams — Field of Nine Baseball; Heavy Hittaz Baseball (both youth travel baseball teams), Tiger Football Club and the Imperial Valley United Soccer Association — are allowed to use Joshua Tree Park.
Unauthorized tourney sparks discussion
A softball tournament held Oct. 17 at a field here sparked the discussion of facility use agreements among the council.
The tournament reportedly had an excess of 100 people, with 14 teams.
A private organization organized the tournament, and raised money by charging a fee — all without submitting any application to the city.
City staff went out and spoke with the tournament’s organizer on the day of the event.
While this situation was handled, the council asked staff to present them with the field reservation and usage fees, so it could better understand the approval process.
During the Nov. 4 council meeting, the city’s Park Superintendent Tony Lopez presented the fees: $20 deposit for keys, $25 to $35 per hour for field lighting and a $100 deposit fee, among others.
“Nobody, in my view, is above the procedure we have in the city,” Lopez said. “Everybody should, and will, fill out our facility use agreement, because then they have a responsibility to the city. They are responsible to a certain extent for damages.”
According to Lopez, parks within the city mostly use combination locks for the snack bar and lighting.
Councilman Robert Amparano questioned how many people have the combination to the locks, and if those involved in the Oct. 17 unauthorized softball tournament knew of any combinations.
“There was a snack bar in use,” Amparano said of the tournament. “And, by all means, they probably could’ve used the lights because they do have the combination.”
The councilman said he felt the fees were necessary to avoid situations like the softball tournament, in which a private organization used the city’s park to have a for-profit event.
“We’re fixing, we’re replacing, we’re painting — we’re doing all this work to these snack bars, but we don’t see a profit,” Amparano said. “I’m not here to make a profit, but we’re still doing the maintenance for it.”
While the Field of Nine, Heavy Hittaz and IV United Soccer Association had to pay a fee for their applications, the council voted not to charge the Tiger Football Club, which is made up of approximately 100 players from all levels of Imperial High School’s football program.
The council approved this because they agreed the IHS players are under exceptional circumstances, and would’ve been practicing at IHS had it not been for the pandemic.
While a facility use agreement grants an organization a set time/day to use the city facilities (lights, snack bar, etc.), it does not grant the right for an organization to remove anyone from the park.
“They get scheduled access,” Imperial Mayor Darrell Pechtl said. “Obviously, our families must come first.”
That Imperial is allowing teams to hold practices at its parks is an exception within the Valley, as other cities are more restrictive. Rules in El Centro, for instance, dictate, “Sports practices are not allowed in any city park, field, retention basin or any other city facility.”
The Field of Nine, Heavy Hittaz, IVUSA and Tigers Football Club all submitted their facility use agreement with a California Department of Public Health COVID-19 youth sports guideline packet.
IVUSA and Tigers Football Club submitted their agreement for “conditioning purposes only.”
About 6:30 p.m. Monday, IVUSA players could be seen in Joshua Tree’s soccer field performing shooting drills and playing small scrimmages.
Just down the way, on Joshua’s baseball field, the IHS freshmen team was running handoff plays with both an offense and defense scout team on the field.