Northpinellas: If reason guides debate on fee, everyone wins

The Oldsmar Little League has threatened to jam City Council chambers with busloads of uniformed Little Leaguers if the city doesn't back off of a proposal to make non-residents pay a fee for participation in city recreation programs.

"It just seems that the only thing that our city manager and City Council members respond to is when there is an uproar," former league president Bill Schneider told a Times reporter last week.

Please, let's not use the children to create an uproar. Mature adults ought to be able to discuss user fees in a reasonable way, especially when there is nothing outlandish about the city's study of them.

Under the proposed fee structure, the city would issue annual recreation cards for participation in city recreation programs. Residents of Oldsmar would pay $3 for a single card or $10 for a family card. Non-residents would pay $50 per card. Non-residents participating in league football, baseball or soccer could get a card for the athletic season for a reduced price of $20.

User fees and recreation cards are used by cities throughout the country, including in Pinellas County. Clearwater, for example, has sold recreation cards and charged fees for recreation programs for years. The fees help defer the costs of recreation programs and facilities without raising property taxes.

Oldsmar has the misfortune of being a small town surrounded by much larger areas of unincorporated Pinellas County. Palm Harbor is due west and East Lake is to the north, and the combined population of the two is probably nudging 80,000. Both areas have seen explosive growth in the past decade, with many of the new residents being young families looking for recreational opportunities.

Pinellas County traditionally has not financed recreation facilities for residents of the unincorporated area, choosing instead to focus on building passive county parks. But Oldsmar, with a population of only 10,000 and a relatively small tax base, can't hope to provide all the facilities and programs sought by both its own residents and those in Palm Harbor and East Lake.

Oldsmar Little League, which plays its games on fields at the city's Canal Park, has seen its own boom in recent years. The league has more than 700 players, but according to city records, 60 percent of the players don't live in the city limits. In the youth soccer league, 66 percent of the players don't live in the city, and 40 percent of the youth football players live outside of town.

So the simple way of looking at the situation is that Oldsmar taxpayers, by providing and maintaining Canal Park and other recreation facilities, are subsidizing families that do not live in the city or pay taxes there. It is that inequity that the city's non-resident fee proposal addresses. It would force people who are not city taxpayers, but who want to take advantage of city recreation programs, to help pay the costs.

That is only fair. And charging non-resident fees is a lot better than barring non-residents from the city programs entirely.

However, there is a complication when it comes to Oldsmar Little League. The league long ago outgrew the five fields at Canal Park and was forced to schedule games seven days a week and end games after 10 p.m. on school nights. But the city didn't have the money to build enough new fields to ease the crunch.

So four years ago, the league began raising money for new fields at Canal Park. Through great effort, it has raised $170,000 and plans to give that money to the city for new fields.

So Little League officials perhaps aren't being overly sensitive when they resent the implication that their non-resident families contribute nothing to the city coffers. The city already is offering youth athletes a reduced-price recreation card, but it may want to consider a further reduction for a limited time.

As City Council members meet early next month to consider the fee proposal, they should make sure that the non-resident fees are not punitive, do not unnecessarily discourage participation and reflect the city's true costs of providing the services.

Then they should vote their consciences -- regardless of the uproar.

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