The Parks and Recreation Board expects to vote later this month on a resolution that calls for greater public access to city-owned baseball, softball and soccer fields.
To accomplish the goals outlined in the draft proposal, the city’s Parks and Recreation Department would need to standardize and clarify the contract language with outside organizations that maintain and use the ball fields. The department is already in the process of standardizing language in its contractual agreements with outside groups.
The ball-field contracts, the resolution states, “were developed over many years to address specific localized needs and maintenance challenges, but have inadvertently created barriers to public access.”
“These contracts were written in a somewhat loosey-goosey style, and so there isn’t really a lot of clarity around what happens if you don’t do what you’re supposed to do,” said Board Member Lane Becker, who led a board working group created last year to address the public-access issue.
Becker pointed to a March 2025 city audit on ball fields as the guide the working group used for crafting the resolution’s recommendations to City Council. The board had requested the audit by way of Council action.
“It’s been challenging in recent years for residents of the city who wanted to access baseball and soccer fields, which require a fair degree of maintenance,” Becker said, recapping the origin of the working group. “The city had set up a variety of contracts with local organizations – some nonprofits, some for-profit, to maintain those fields in exchange for priority, and in some cases, exclusive access to use those fields, which made it more difficult for individuals who weren’t part of those organizations to get access to those fields.”
While some of the contracts specify that the public would also have access to the ball fields, “implantation of that (access) and the consistency of it were spotty at best,” Becker said.
To resolve that issue, the working group proposed several potential solutions in the resolution.
The draft calls for establishing a centralized information source for the public. “This doesn’t exist at the moment, and it really needs to so that there’s one simple and direct way for folks to come in and actually understand what they need to do” to use the fields.
Ideally, Lane said, this information source would provide contact information for field reservations, available time slots for public use and clear procedures for accessing the fields.
The draft recommendations also call for a robust online scheduling platform that would provide real-time information about ball field locations and availability.
Recognizing the technical work involved in creating such a system, Becker said, “I think (it) would be extremely valuable for the city and for everyone who wants to use these fields.”
The draft resolution further calls for a revised agreement for youth sports organizations, or YSOs, which hold a special category under city code. The working group recommends revising the YSO agreements to allow for a minimum number of days that non-YSO organizations would be granted exclusive access to reserve the fields.
“So basically, the goal here is to continue to allow YSOs to have priority access … but when those fields are not being used by them, there are ways for other organizations to access them as well,” Becker said.
The board will vote on the resolution as a recommendation to City Council at its Sept. 29 meeting.
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