To help offset facility maintenance costs, Peachtree City has enacted a significant increase to its the per-participant charge to youth and adult sports associations.
That means that for each season, sports associations will pay the city a $15 fee for each city resident signed up to play, a $25 fee for each county resident signed up to play, and a $50 fee for each out of county resident signed up to play.
The fees were previously set at $5 for city residents, $10 for county residents and $25 for each out of county resident.
The increased participant fees charged to sports associations are projected to raise about $124,000 in additional funding over the course of the year, and they take effect immediately upon approval last week by the City Council. The fee hikes did not include those charged to sports associations that use the Kedron pools, as those fees were raised two years ago, city officials said.
The city pays about $249,000 a year to maintain the various sports fields and facilities, not including the pools.
Some 80 percent of the new fees will be dedicated to facility maintenance while the other 20 percent will be set aside for future capital needs, officials said.
At a workshop meeting last week, several association representatives wondered if they could count on the city properly increasing field maintenance, since there have been problems working with the contractor that handles landscaping for the city’s sports fields.
For example, the contractor has failed on three different dates to apply herbicide on the soccer fields as scheduled, one association member noted.
In recent seasons, the associations themselves have been paying for additional field maintenance to supplant the various cutbacks that have occurred at the city due to shrinking property tax revenues.
Recreation Director Cajen Rhodes noted that the city should have the responsibility for all field and facility maintenance so the associations can be freed up to focus on providing recreational opportunities for children.
Council also voted to approve a 20 percent increase in facility rental rates effective for the 2013 fiscal years, along with a “tiered” special event permit fee so the city can recoup labor costs associated with events such as triathlons, large sports tournaments and the like that consume a significant amount of set-up and take-down time for barriers, tables and similar fixtures.
The idea behind increasing those fees is to make sure the city is “assigning those costs to those users” said Community Development Director Jon Rorie.
