To the editor:

This past fall, Barrington youth athletic associations were informed there was a proposal to quadruple the fees we pay the town for our field use with no plan to allocate the additional funds to improve field conditions.  

I was surprised and disappointed with how this proposal was introduced.  

Rather than treat youth leagues as partners in providing children opportunities to exercise, create friendships, and learn the value of teamwork by allowing us to help identify and solve the problems of limited field space in town, we were simply told how much more we were going to be expected to pay for the fields we currently use.  The increased amounts were arbitrary, and no one has yet to explain how $25 per child per half year for tier one level fields, which aren't tier one anywhere else in the state, up from $10 per child per year, was reached.  

These arbitrary and steep increases will force the difficult decision on the youth leagues to absorb these costs and cut back drastically in other areas in order to remain financially viable, or pass the increases along to the participating families. Either way, the youth leagues and their families will be negatively impacted to an as yet unknowable degree.

In addition to the increased fees per player, there are new proposed fees specifically targeted to our annual invitational soccer tournament, a fixture of Barrington for nearly 40 years, that go far beyond simply covering costs to the town. 

For Barrington Youth Soccer, the steep increase to what we pay the town to help us hold the tournament reduces what we net from our only fund-raiser and the additional revenue source we use to support the rest of our programs. Given the effort involved in holding the tournament, netting far less from the event may make it no longer feasible to hold it, which will not only affect our young athletes, but will also ripple out to affect the businesses and various craft fairs that enjoy the extra sales generated by the thousands of visitors we bring to Barrington that weekend each year.  

Barrington could use more field space, but simply quadrupling the amount youth organizations pay the town will not solve this issue. We have yet to see plans for how these additional sums will either improve the fields upon which we currently play or how they will result in additional fields.  

We have been invited to public meetings, but these issues are not going to be solved in a few two hour meetings, though I am extremely appreciative the council members allowed us to communicate with them directly last month.  

Much more work must be done, with contributions from both the youth leagues and the town, before something resembling a plan exists. If these fee increases go through in their current form, Barrington will enjoy the dubious distinction of charging our child athletes what could very well be the highest fees in the state to play on some of the worst fields in the state.

Our field conditions are not any one person's fault, and I appreciate that it is not easy to maintain our green spaces with the different youth leagues' current level of demand, however shouldn't the first step be to see how this situation could be improved though increased communication and coordination between the youth leagues and the town?  

The youth leagues and the town management are partners in the well-being of our children, and I know all parties involved want the Barrington youth leagues to provide quality experiences for their young athletes. I respect that field maintenance, and certainly field construction, takes money that has to come from somewhere, but before assuming any more money can come from the leagues without killing them off, we should explore other ways of solving these issues.

Until we have a detailed plan explaining how the tens of thousands of new fees collected for our child athletes will be used to improve our current fields, and possibly locate and develop new surfaces, I urge the town council to reject this proposal for the time being until we can explore this further.  

Increasing the fees at this time, especially with no plan in place on how to improve our current surfaces, creates a high degree of risk of adverse financial consequences to the youth leagues. 

I know we all care about the well-being of our children, and I know we all believe the friendships they create through team sports, and the life lessons learned on those fields have a value. Our field conditions have been a concern a number of times in the past, with some good measures taken, but also many promises and tentative plans unfulfilled. 

The proverbial iron is hot; now, while attention is keenly focused on this issue, we have an opportunity to join together to discuss meaningful, long-term solutions. That process has now started in a somewhat piecemeal fashion, but much work remains to be done.  

The town council will be voting on this fee increase, among others, during its 7 p.m. meeting in council chambers next Monday, March 4. This meeting is open to the public, with the ability for anyone to express their feelings on this and other issues.

For these and many, many other reasons, I believe the current increased field fee proposal in its current form is a bad idea and I hope the town council members will not approve it at this time.

Sincerely,

Steve DeBoth

Barrington

Barrington Youth Soccer Association