Letter: What is the real motive for field fee increase?

Posted 9/24/18

To the editor:

I am writing to express my opposition to the town manager’s plan to increase fees on youth sport leagues, as outlined in last week’s Barrington Times. 

The …

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Letter: What is the real motive for field fee increase?

Posted

To the editor:

I am writing to express my opposition to the town manager’s plan to increase fees on youth sport leagues, as outlined in last week’s Barrington Times. 

The town manager argues that the costs of field maintenance should be borne by the youth sport leagues using these fields and not at the expense of taxpayers at large. It is true that economists often advocate for so-called “benefits taxes” in order to align the benefits of public services with their costs. Yet this requires that benefits actually be provided, and the article explicitly notes that DPW workers were explicitly directed to not maintain these fields. 

So, the town manager proposes to increase costs to youth sports leagues while decreasing benefits. 

Moreover, participation in youth sports in Barrington is widespread, and these programs are thus not benefitting a small group of residents. For soccer alone, almost 10 percent of households in Barrington are participating this year, and there are many more families that have benefitted in the past or will benefit in the future. Businesses in town benefit from the BIT Tournament, there are other sports in town, and families that participate in youth sports are also taxpayers. 

Finally, this argument represents a slippery slope. Would we want to charge tuition to students attending our schools in order to finance teacher salaries?

If enacted, would this proposal even benefit taxpayers? The cost of maintaining fields for youth sports is a tiny share of the town budget. BYSA players in total currently pay around $10,000 per year in field fees, and even if these increased by $40,000, to $50,000, that would represent less than 0.1 percent of the overall town budget of $72 million. Said differently, even if property taxes fell accordingly by $40,000, this would represent less than 0.1 percent of town’s overall property tax collections of $58 million, and the median family, with a house valued at $400,000 and currently paying $8,000 per year, would pay approximately one dollar less in each quarterly installment.

So, if this is not an attempt to help taxpayers, what is the real motive here? 

A clue emerges from the other front page story last week involving the town manager’s request to have DPW work inside of schools, a move that is opposed by the DPW union. Is the town manager attempting to increase the budget of DPW in order to cover the costs associated with the increased workload in this proposal? If so, this turf battle is being resolved on the backs of young athletes.

Youth sports leagues are run as non-profits, and any increase in fees will have to be passed along to the athletes and their families. Three of the biggest challenges facing kids today are screen time, obesity, and anxiety, and a key recommendation for addressing all three involves exercise. 

Given this, and the already rising costs of youth sports, do we really want to exclude more kids from youth sports in order to resolve this turf battle?

Brian Knight

Barrington

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A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.