Sandwich Schools Eye Fees For Gym, Field Use

By DAVID A. FONSECA
Sensing another tight budget season, the school committee will consider creating a new revenue stream by charging fees for the use of its fields and gymnasiums.
According to school committee Chairman Robert J. Guerin, the school district’s fields and facilities will cost around $140,000 to maintain during the current fiscal year, and if used by various groups and organizations for free, would not generate any revenue for the schools.
“We have a $140,000 debit in our budget that we realize no revenue on,” Mr. Guerin said.
During a workshop last week, Mr. Guerin told his committee it was time to have a serious discussion about facilities usage fees.
Community School Director James J. Lehane, who administrates school facility use, broke down how the district’s fields and facilities were used between September of 2006 and August of 2007.
According to a report compiled by Mr. Lehane, the district’s fields were played on for a total of 11,462 hours after 3 PM.
For 79 percent of that time, Mr. Lehane said, the fields were used by sports teams, such as Sandwich Youth Baseball and Soccer, Little League, Babe Ruth, and Pop Warner, that do not pay fees for their use of the fields.
The district’s auditoriums and multi-purpose rooms saw 5,426 hours of use. For 31 percent of that time, town sports leagues, such as youth soccer, Pop Warner, and Little League, which pay no user fees, used those facilities.
The school committee has broached the idea of facilities use fees in the past, and even held a workshop with the heads of the various sports leagues in town during the previous school year.
The committee decided against imposing fees during that workshop, with members stating that while the sports leagues did not pay a fee, they did provide a valuable service to the community. 
With the school district having recently laid off 31 employees, school committee member Robert F. Simmons Jr. said that it was no longer feasible for groups not affiliated with the schools to use their facilities for free.
“I think the difference right now is the fact that we laid off 31 people,” Mr. Simmons said. “In the future we are looking at more cuts. Our labor costs are fixed, our revenue side is generally static, and there’s no override in our foreseeable future, and I wouldn’t support one. The onus is on the school committee to maximize revenue.”
The goal of the fees would be to offset the cost of maintenance, not to generate a profit, Mr. Simmons said.
“The key to the facilities use issue is cost recovery,” he said.  “We don’t want to make a profit renting out our buildings and fields, but we do want to charge users what it costs us to maintain them.”
Interim Superintendent Mary Ellen Johnson did not weigh in on whether she would support charging facilities usage fees, but she pointed out that the cost would be a burden to many parents who send their children to Sandwich schools.
Mr. Simmons said this week that he realized many would make a similar argument, saying that the school committee was robbing Peter to pay Paul. However, he said it was fairer to place the cost on field upkeep on the actual users, rather than having the district bear the entire burden. 
“I’m sure somebody will make that argument; obviously fees will be passed to the users, who are mostly Sandwich residents,” he said. “But the cost will be picked up by people who are using the fields; they won’t be picked up by the people who aren’t using the fields.”
The fees would be analogous to the athletic fees that are currently paid by students in the district, or bus fees that were charged in the past, Mr. Guerin said.
Mr. Guerin said school committee members had not yet decided whether they would seek to charge users to offset the entire cost of facility maintenance, or just an amount proportional to the portion of time the fields are used by non-school entities.
“To be blunt, I would not rule out trying to recover the entire amount,” he said.
Mr. Guerin said he has not yet discussed fees with any of the various users of the district’s fields, but said that the affected parties would be invited to join the conversation about fees when the school committee meets in September.
Robert D. Sullivan, president of the Sandwich Little League, said that adding fees for facility use “didn’t seem fair,” considering that some families already struggle to afford to play baseball.
“You’re probably going to lose some of those families because of the added expense,” he said. “These families can only afford so much,” he said. 
Mr. Sullivan said that, currently, some families are able to participate in Little League, thanks only to tuition waivers.
He added that Little League already puts around $25,000 a year toward maintenance of the baseball fields they use.
“That will certainly be taken into consideration,” Mr. Guerin said. He added that the school committee appreciated the services that all of the organizations that used the schools facilities provide.
He said that he was aware of the fact that the sports leagues and clubs in town were facing the same difficulties as the school district, and would be sensitive to their financial situations.
However, Mr. Guerin said he would balance the input he received from the community against the “ultimate objective,” that of providing education and balancing the school district’s budget.