User fee pays for maintenance of athletic fields

Mass Innovations, From The Beacon, April 2012

When parents asked if more attention could be devoted to maintaining Sudbury’s athletic fields, town officials came up with a means of boosting the maintenance effort without boosting the budget.

The town created a dedicated enterprise fund, capitalized by a $15 fee paid by the parents for each season of baseball, soccer and lacrosse that a child or youth takes part in.

In fiscal 2012, the first full year of the program, the fees are expected to generate roughly $100,000, enough to cover one-half of the salaries of four parks and grounds employees involved with field maintenance, as well as summer seasonal help, according to Town Manager Maureen Valente.

“Because the fees are collected from the parents for the recreational department and held in this fund, it’s almost as if they contract with our workers to make sure it gets done,” Valente said. “[The money] doesn’t get lost in all the other [spending] priorities.”

Not all parents of baseball, lacrosse and soccer players were eager to pay another fee on top of the cost of participating in each sport, she said, but they appreciated that the money would go directly toward field maintenance.
“They didn’t want to see a situation where the fields were mowed only every two weeks during a prime playing season,” which was all the town could afford within its budget, Valente said.

Sudbury’s field-maintenance fund, she said, is similar to what has typically been used for infrastructure projects – a betterment fee assessed to homeowners who benefit from a new sewer line, for example.

“That was the whole concept: taking the fee-for-service that you normally see in the utility field and bringing it over to field maintenance,” Valente said.

For more information, contact Maureen Valente at (978) 639-3382.