Youth Sports to Pay Up to 1,300 Percent More For Park Space

Local sports groups will need to pay much more to use certain parks in Los Alamitos, Rossmoor and Seal Beach starting Jan. 1.

The Los Alamitos City Council approved fee hikes Monday night for athletic groups that want to rent city and Los Alamitos Unified School District recreational facilities.

Starting in 2014, the price of local playtime will rise for the first time in 11 years. The fees will increase every year through 2018.

Fee changes chart

             Current      Fees by         % Change
             Fees           2018

AYSO     $10,351     $70,628        682.33 

FNL        $6,530       $64,052        980.89

LAYB      $0              $8,783           n/a

LAGSL     $330         $4,500          1364.63 

St.           $1,056      $6,293          595.93
Hedwig
Baseball

Los Al     $1,220        $6,711         550.08
Pop Warner
Football

TOTAL     $19,487      $160,967     826.02

City staff said the revenue would help maintain the parks and establish a new improvement fund for major renovations to the oft-used recreational sites.

According to the staff report, each site costs “just under $53,000 per site per year” to maintain, and the city spends more than $225,000 and LAUSD spends more than $500,000 a year on field maintenance.

“We think it’s important to bring the fields up to a higher standard, a higher level of maintenance,” said Corey Lakin, city director of recreation and community services. “The general feeling of the community has been ‘We’d like the fields upgraded.’”

“The capital improvement fund, we think, is terrific because it will enable the city and the school district to have a fund to do some major improvements to the fields when they’re necessary,” said Lakin.

The school district approved the fee increases in May, and Los Al officials gave the new fees a 5-0 yes vote Monday night. The increase affects all city and district parks, as well as parks used by both the district and the city.

Until Jan. 1, local sports groups, community groups and community nonprofits will continue to pay the per-hour amount listed on the city’s website for each field. Under the current system, a local sports league of 100 people could rent Oak Middle School softball field with a full infield for $5 an hour.

However, starting next year, local groups will pay a different set of fees depending on two criteria:

• An hourly fee schedule that depends on the size and type of the field

and (if the group uses the field more than four days in a season):

• A per-person fee that depends on what sport the group plays.

The new fee system can get complicated, but in general:

If that same league of 100 people wanted to rent out that same Oak softball field once in 2014, it’d cost $9 an hour.

But if that same league of 100 people wanted to rent the softball field a dozen times in a 2014 season, it’d be $9 an hour plus $1.25 per person per season. That’s $9 for one hour of play plus $125.

No members of the public spoke about the issue during public comments, and Councilman Richard Murphy said that was a sign the city, the school district and residents had come to an agreement on the fees without amicably.

“This was one of the greatest examples of our community coming together,” Murphy said. “Two months ago, this place would have been full of 100 of our finest Little League athletes in full uniform protesting the fees and ready to storm the gate. And, two months later, there's not even one public comment."

According to city staff, fees initially were to increase all at once, but after discussions and workshops, the district and the city voted to spread the increases out over five years. 

Click here for today’s top stories from Los Alamitos-Seal Beach-Rossmoor Patch.

Stay Patched in! Like Los Alamitos Patch on Facebook | Follow us on Twitter and Sign up for the daily email with links to the latest local news.