Town officials on Tuesday pushed back on a proposal from the private group that oversees youth lacrosse in New Canaan to cease paying a mandatory “fields usage fee.”
Addressing a letter sent last month by the New Canaan Lacrosse Association, members of the Board of Selectmen at their regular meeting said that the $20 per-player, per-season fee for maintenance and upgrades at playing fields around town applies across-the-board.
“I don’t see how, if we are charging all the sports groups a $20 fee, how one of them can just say, ‘Oh we changed our mind,’ ” Selectman Beth Jones said during the meeting, held at Town Hall.
Though they did not name the New Canaan Lacrosse Association specifically, the selectmen referred to a letter that the NCLA president sent last month to the Youth Sports Committee, a volunteer group that had spent years finalizing plans to impose the fee. (The selectmen backed the new fee unanimously in October 2015.)
According to the Dec. 8 letter, the NCLA after contributing $100,000 toward a new turf field at Dunning Stadium last summer found its resources “drained.”
Contributed willingly to benefit athletics in town and to ensure the safety of New Canaan players, the donation also “put additional pressure on our already thin budget,” according to the letter from Kimberly Connors, NCLA president.
“The growth in the numbers of lacrosse players in this town has been massive over time, and it has also created a larger need for some financial flexibility given the difficulty of modeling and budgeting. Our contribution also hampered our ability to make future contributions to New Canaan sports facilities/fields going forward. As such, we would like to address the field usage funds that we have been contributing to the fields’ budget in the near term. While many of us on the board do not object, in principal, to contributing to ongoing field maintenance (as opposed to those funds coming from the general tax base), it is our intent to rebuild our normal reserves, to allow us to continue to make a meaningful impact on our town’s athletic facilities, fund unforeseen needs of our program and to provide scholarship dollars, as we see fit. As such, we would like to forego making further field contributions, until we feel comfortable that we have sufficient resources to continue to contribute as we have in the past.”
Selectman Nick Williams said the discussion was ongoing and that though “it’s wonderful if we are getting these large contributions for field upgrades” from youth sports groups, in the future New Canaan should take those contributions “minus the mandatory fee.”
“This is a mandatory fee, so it has to be paid,” he said.
First Selectman Rob Mallozzi noted that the NCLA said it was facing a cash shortage following its $100,000 donation for Dunning, adding: “But to your point, there is an obligation there.”
Parks superintendent John Howe said that the fields usage fee is to be collected from youth sports parents at the time their kids register.
The discussion arose during the New Canaan Department of Public Works’ capital budget presentation for next fiscal year.
Mallozzi said that New Canaan puts relatively little taxpayer money into its playing fields and should set aside funds during this budget season for capital improvements and irrigation upgrades.
Though municipal officials have “worked hard to wean the town away from the [youth sports] leagues” for fields maintenance, “I think it’s time we spent this kind of money on our fields,” Mallozzi said.
“It’s not a ton of money for our grass and our fields when you think about all the impact and how many kids are playing sports,” he said.
Addressing requests from the DPW for $65,000 in field improvements and $40,000 for irrigation upgrades at various locations in town, Mallozzi said: “This is kind of like a ‘must-have.’ ”
Public works requested $3,167,000 total for its capital budget in fiscal year 2018—a sharp increase from the $1.8 million in capital spending for the current fiscal year, according to DPW Director Tiger Mann, driven by major projects such as at Waveny House and for a proposed Locust Avenue parking deck.