Some Vancouver parents will shell out more for their kids to play ball this season after the park board introduced a $2-per-hour fee for groups that want to reserve a field.
Some little league organizations are now raising their rates to compensate for the new fees.
“We’ve got 550 kids playing over nine weeks,” said Jericho Little League president Tim Dow. “We reserve about 3,000 hours worth of field time, so it costs us about $6,000 this year to our budget.”
That’s about ten per cent of the league’s overall budget, Dow said, but the cost has already been covered by increased registration fees and extra sponsorship from local businesses.
Most parents paid $160 to register their kids for the upcoming season, Dow said, an increase of $10 from last year.
The user fee levied by the parks board is $1.90 per hour of field use for any groups that want to book games or practices. Once organizations tally how many hours they’ll need for the season, the park board sends them the bill.
“This fee is really per use of the facility, not per child, but really focused, and we think it’s really a reasonable fee to be charging,” said park board vice-chair Aaron Jasper.
The levy will raise about $50,000 per year for a fund to be used for park maintenance, he said.
Having to pay to reserve field time will also deter groups from booking a ball diamond in advance and then not using it, something that happened when it was free of charge, Jasper said.
“We felt that this fee would be an extra incentive to use it. If you’re going to book it, you use it, you’re paying this fee,” he said. “Given that it’s a new fee, we’ll see how that works out.”
Dow said he’s already noticed field space opening up.
“We were able to reserve fields we weren’t able to reserve in the past,” he said. “In general I would say I’m happy.”
While parents will be pay more thanks to the fee, there are subsidies available for those facing financial hardship, he said.
With a report from CTV British Columbia’s Maria Weisgarber
