Sports Fields Deputation

Sports Fields

My name is Jutta Mason. I want to speak to the sports fields item today. I have been involved with various parks in Ward 18 for many years, including Dufferin Grove Park, and since 2005 I’ve also been the administrator of a small charitable non-profit group called the “Centre for Local Research into Public Space,” CELOS.

Our group has been been following the sports fields debate with interest. As we listened to the speakers at public meetings and read the consultation notes, we found that the difficulty in getting detailed information comes up again and again. Sports field users have been told that they must pay more permit fees to cover the cost of field maintenance, but when they ask “how much does the city currently pay to maintain these fields?” they are told that the breakdown of numbers is not available. The concrete details are not given in this latest staff report either. But how can your committee make an informed decision in the absence of available numbers?

This omission is all the more serious because of the widespread public testimony that many of the sports groups have given: namely, that they do the majority of field maintenance themselves. Volunteers may cut the grass in the infield, drag the fields, fill in the holes that would break ankles, put down the lines, pick the litter, clean the washrooms, and buy toilet paper with their own money. Irrigation systems, when they exist, are often out of commission. Even so, Parks staff report that their field maintenance costs are high. But how much is spent, and where?

The last big costing study PFR did was in 2007, the “Full Costing and Pricing Study.”

The first thing that catches your attention when you read it is how much of the costs of running programs are “indirect.”

Over half of the recreation program costs sampled in this study were administrative support and corporate expenses, not the actual service. More than a third of the total costs of operating all the sampled facilities and programs were “indirect.”

In the six years since this study was done, PFR total operating costs have gone up by over $90 million, and even if you adjust that to $60 million to take inflation into account, that’s alarming.

During those six years, it appears that direct service like good sports field maintenance has gone into a dive. What’s going on?

The general manager’s sports field report being considered today makes a lot of promises of better direct service from now on. But it also says: “please, City Council, put more fees in now, even before we show we can deliver these promised improvements.” But the sports association are saying “we’re not going into this blind.”

Neither should the executive committee.

CELOS has been encouraging the sports associations to put in some freedom of information requests to find out the fiscal details they want. That will help. But it’s cumbersome.

Getting the most basic line-item information through FOI is a big struggle. For example, in Ward 18 we have an interest in creating a Ward 18 parks conservancy. We asked PFR for the Ward 18 PFR budget details on April 10 of this year. Simple FOI requests like this are supposed to be filled in 28 days. But on June 12, we’re still waiting.

In the case of the sports fields issue, your committee could help make this process faster and better. If your committee directs PFR to let the Park supervisors sit down with the sports field users in the individual wards and share the existing, detailed numbers, the question of how to improve the sports fields will finally get some new light shone on it. The parks supervisors know a lot. They can report on the line items connected with sports fields through their SAP system. Their cost-centre tallies and their work assignment schedules can flesh it out.

- Line items from SAP

- Cost Centres

- Work Assignments

The other people who know a lot are the sports field users. They know exactly what details to ask about. A joint report, enlightened by this new information, at your next meeting, would allow you to consider the general manager’s recommendations at the level of detail that’s needed to make this work. Please consider this suggestion as an alternative to approving this report as it now stands.

The best way to find out:

Direct communication between

supervisors and sports leagues

Working together!

to accompany live Deputation to the Executive Committee, re Item Ex.21.8. June 12 2012.

December 12, 2007

http://publiccommons.ca/public/uploads/FullCostingReview-Dec12-07FINAL.pdf

So... how much does it cost the city

to maintain sports fields?