Lifeline offered to leagues hit by new fees
‘We don’t want any groups to fold,’ says Councillor Sarah Doucette
The city plans to offer flexible payment plans and other lifelines to sports leagues threatened by hefty new field fees in the 2012 budget.
Councillor Sarah Doucette (Ward 13, Parkdale-high Park), who proposed the help, said it’s not the one-year reprieve that many leagues sought, but “we are doing our best to help. We don’t want any groups to fold.”
A reprieve would have meant reopening the budget and making a further $1.5 million in cuts to offset the lost revenue, she said, adding there is little political appetite for that.
Instead, council voted unanimously Tuesday night to have city staff report back by April on ways to offer relief to leagues struggling to pay the new fees.
Staff will also work with field permit holders on plans to give them extra time to pay and ensure they don’t get blindsided again in the future.
The fees, such as $6 an hour for a small baseball diamond and $12 for a large one, were introduced by council in January. But the leagues didn’t find out until last month, after summer registration had started.
For the East York Baseball Association, with 650 players on 45 teams, the charges total $53,000 — a sum nearly impossible to collect this far into the season, said president Andrew Pace.
“We’re not tax collectors. We’re volunteers,” he said.
He added the fees could translate into $30 to $100 per player, depending on how many games they play and on which diamonds.
“All of our 2012 budgets were set in the fall of 2011 and our fees were set at that time. Our registrations are nearly complete, or close to it,” he said. “We have no way to go back to membership and we can’t borrow the money.”
“No one wants kids on the street with nothing to do.” ANDREW PACE EAST YORK BASEBALL ASSOCIATION
Fee payments were originally due in April. Even before council’s vote, leagues were told they could pay one-third by May 1 and the remainder by Sept. 30.
But the city needs to do more than be a little flexible to solve the problem, Pace said.
“No one wants leagues to shut down. No one wants kids on the street with nothing to do. We have to find a way to make this work.”
Dave Black, president of the Toronto Baseball Association, said fees for outdoor fields will be passed on to players, and some kids won’t get to play.
“Quite often families have two or three kids playing,” he said. “They’re not going to pull one out. They’ll take all of them out of baseball.”
Black said a start-up league in Leslieville collapsed after volunteers were overwhelmed by the additional charges on top of organizing the new league.
Smaller baseball leagues such as West Hill in Scarborough have started cutting Saturday practices from their schedules to avoid some of the added costs. John Steeles, president of the Toronto Beaches Lacrosse Club, said it’s not the fees but the timing of them: It’s “just not acceptable” to learn in mid-february his club would be charged $20,000 to use outdoor hockey pads to run summer box lacrosse games.