Laserfiche WebLink
Council briefly further discussed this issue on May 28 and generally the feeling was that the <br />city is busy enough maintaining and scheduling its own facilities and parks, it doesn't want <br />the potential liability for scheduling and maintaining the school facilities, and it doesn't want <br />the "headache" of scheduling and prioritizing field use for more than one association per <br />sport. <br /> <br />City staff desires to gct out of the school field maintenance and scheduling business for a <br />number of reasons. One reason is that sometimes the school district does field <br />improvements or weed spraying without prior communication and notice to the city and this <br />causes us problems with scheduling. Another issue and reason is that the fees received from <br />the youth associations never covers the time, material, and equipment involved in <br />maintenance. Finally, and most importantly, maintaining school fields limits the maintenance <br />of city parks. No longer maintaining school fields will free up a significant amount of time <br />and equipment that can be used on other park projects. <br /> <br />The school district has the equipment and the expertise to do field maintenance. They do <br />this work in the spring and in the fall. The school district can receive most of the funds for <br />maintenance from the youth associations and hire summer help to maintain their own <br />facilities for use by the associations. Therefore, children from throughout the school district <br />can be using school district scheduled and maintained facilities. If the funds received from <br />the association are not enough to cover the school's expenses, then the school district and <br />the associations need to work things out. This change does not cause any real extra work for <br />the youth associations as they already work with community education on scheduling of <br />school facilities in other communities. <br /> <br />In summary, reasons for this proposed change include: <br /> <br />· Community recreation disbanding and changing to city recreation...there is no <br /> longer one group doing all the coordination of all the facilities and this is now done <br /> by individual cities and the school district. <br />· It makes no sense for the city to be scheduling and maintaining school facilities. <br />· It makes no sense for the school district to be involved in setting city scheduling <br /> policies <br />· Reduces city liability (i.e. injuries taking place on school fields that the city schedules <br /> and maintains). <br />· The city desires to use its summer help and equipment to do more work in city <br /> parks.., this is a true concern as the city will soon be scheduling and maintaining the <br /> softball complex. <br />· School improvements to school fields are sometimes unpredictable and this has <br /> caused scheduling and maintenance problems for the city. This should be less of a <br /> problem with the school both scheduling and maintaining their own property <br /> <br />It is recommended that the city send notice to the school district and the youth associations <br />that the city will no longer be scheduling and maintaining the school district fields. <br /> <br />S/council/pat / schoolfieldmaint <br /> <br /> <br />