Leagues may get one-time break on fees

City staff have thrown a lifeline to volunteer sports leagues who say they can’t afford fees for outdoor playing facilities.

A staff report going to council April10 recommends waiving some or all of the charges for the 2012 season only, for any league that proves it can’t afford the payments. The deadline to apply for financial relief is Sept. 30.

The report asks “council to give the general manager (of parks, forestry and recreation) the authority to approve in whole or in part the fees that groups are unable to afford,” said the department’s spokesperson, Graham Mitchell.

“If (organizations) say we’ve undertaken our best efforts to collect the fees — and a proportion of them have been unable to afford the fees — here’s how much it is, here’s how much we’re short and we’re asking for forgiveness on the remaining portion,” said Mitchell. Staff haven’t specified how leagues will be asked to report that information.

The offer is a departure from the city’s position, says Andrew Pace, president of the East York Baseball Association.

In a forum organized by the Toronto Sports Council in late March, staff talked vaguely about helping cash-strapped leagues, but only those who could prove with bank statements that they couldn’t afford to pay.

The current staff report does not ask for financial reporting.

The offer “sounds promising,” Pace said.

“At least we know there is money there to solve the problem right away. I’m glad that they’re putting an olive branch out there for us.”

The staff report was made public Wednesday, too late for a town hall held Tuesday so leagues could air their views. But the recommendation may not be enough, said Councillor Janet Davis, who has spearheaded efforts to get the fees deferred until there’s some consultation with the leagues. Davis said leagues clearly stated to staff in the forum that it didn’t matter whether they had to pay now or later. “They don’t have the money and they can’t pay it,” Davis said. “And the city can go through some cumbersome exercise of trying to have them demonstrate their ability to pay or not to pay. “It would be a total waste of time and good will to get into some paper exchange to waive the fees in the end,” Davis said. “Let’s just agree we’re going to waive them, fix the problem and move on to talk about 2013.” The staff report also provides a fee schedule for organizations that can pay. Davis said a councillor will put forward a motion at the April 10 meeting that the new fees be waived entirely for this year, but doing so would take a vote by two-thirds of council to reopen the budget. Without giving details, Davis also suggested there may be other options that would need only a simple majority. Davis said the $1.5 million could be covered by the 2011 surplus, which will “absolutely” turn out to be larger than previously predicted. At a news conference, Mayor Rob Ford said only that he would be consulting with a city official on Thursday “to come up with some solution for these fees.” “There’s gonna be, obviously, financial impacts on that,” he added. With files by Daniel Dale