City Staff requests that the Shakopee Parks and Recreation Advisory Board discuss youth sports association fees for the city of Shakopee’s outdoor athletic spaces for 2022, to provide feedback to take to City Council.

During the Parks, Trails and Recreation Master Plan process in 2018, Shakopee Parks and Recreation Department recognized two issues that we’ve been working to resolve.  The first issue was the city's scheduling and maintenance spaces that are not city property.  The second issue was the $17 fee participant fee for associations.  No one could explain why it was $17 per participant, nor connect it to any particular expenses.

Beginning in 2019, the City and School District staffs began holding regularly scheduled joint meetings with the 11 Shakopee Youth Sports Associations, initially focusing collaborative efforts on developing and implementing a plan to successfully transition responsibility for scheduling of district indoor facilities from city staff to district staff for the start of 2020 seasons.  As part of that plan, the city stopped collecting the $17 participant fee for indoor sports, resulting in a $35,000.00 decrease in association fee revenues.

Youth associations for indoor sports now pay the school district an hourly rate for use of their facilities (see attached Facility Fees originally published April 15, 2020).  On April 27^th, 2020 the School District removed outdoor athletic fields/facilities from that published schedule to afford staffs more time for analysis, discussion, and input on the scheduling and fees for outdoor spaces.  The Shakopee School District intends to begin charging associations for access to their spaces per the April 16, 2020 fee schedule on January 1, 2022.

City staff estimate the annual cost of maintaining city outdoor athletic fields/facilities and some school district outdoor athletic spaces at approximately $278,000.00 covered by levy dollars in the Public Works budget, with an additional $11,600.00 in expenses for coordination, administration, and scheduling covered by association fee revenues in the Parks and Recreation budget.  Approximately $30,500.00 of those maintenance expenses are directly related to city staff maintaining school district outdoor athletic spaces.  Unlike indoor athletic spaces, outdoor athletic spaces are subject to unpredictable weather with no real ability to control or monitor access for the majority of spaces.  Resident and visitors are not charged a fee for access to these spaces, and access is only limited by published park hours or if the outdoor athletic space has been previously reserved (i.e. Youth Associations, School District Sports, Amateur Sports, etc…).

The city has continued collecting the $17 per participant fee from outdoor youth sports associations adding up to $42,636.00 for the 2021 season in revenues for the Parks and Recreation budget.  Below are listed the outdoor youth sports association users, participant numbers, paid fees, total hours used, the amount paid per hour, and the city cost per hour for 2021: 

City staff research revealed that 11 metro cities do not charge their youth sports associations for use of outdoor spaces, while 6 other metro cities currently charge youth sports associations less than Shakopee’s current $17.00 per participant for use of outdoor spaces.

City Staff requests feedback and direction from the Shakopee Parks and Recreation Advisory Board which can be shared with the Shakopee City Council and Mayor at upcoming meeting on November 16, 2021 concerning the proposed strategy for association fees for the city of Shakopee’s outdoor athletic spaces for 2022.

Staff sees 5 alternatives to consider:

1) Full-cost recovery would result in an increase in expenses for some youth associations by more than 12 times current cost for their use of outdoor spaces.  Staff has been told that any cost increase would have to be passed on directly as increased fees for resident youth users. 

2) 65% cost recovery would still result in a significant cost increase for some youth sports associations of more than 8 times current cost for the use of outdoor spaces. 

3) Maintain the status quo of $17 per participant.

4) Adopting the school district proposed fee schedule for grass fields, would result in city cost recovery decreasing from $42,636.00 (at $17 per participant) to $9,656.80 (at $1.48 per hour) for the same number of user hours and at the same estimated cost of $278,000.00 to the city. 

5) Stop charging youth sports associations for access to outdoor spaces where access cannot be controlled and continue to cover costs with tax levy.