Field upkeep is debated

Editor’s note: This is the second of two parts.

The Newport Harbor Baseball Assn. is a nonprofit that serves kids from of all income levels.

Through an agreement between the city of Costa Mesa and Newport-Mesa Unified School District, the league uses several fields owned by the district.

While trying to develop young athletes, the baseball association also must raise $100 to $125 per child and an additional $100,000 a year to keep up with the demands of maintaining the Newport-Mesa fields it uses, said Lantz Bell, the group’s president.

“It’s how we set our price for registration, it includes the cost of field maintenance and improvements,” Bell said. “I’m very appreciative that I have the space and the land and the opportunity to use the field, but for any improvement ... we have to provide it ourselves.”

Although there’s an agreement between the city and the district that allows youth groups to use school fields to play sports, each entity interprets it differently.

Consequently, the user groups caught in the disconnect have needed to charge kids extra fees and raise money for field maintenance. And even then, some say the kids have to put up with playing on dirt and patchy grass.

Under the 2006 joint-use agreement, the city may use the district’s fields to hold community sporting events, including football, adult soccer and Little League baseball on weekends and after-school hours on weekdays. The agreement cannot charge user groups to play sports.

In exchange, the city pays $170,000 a year to Newport-Mesa to maintain the fields. The rate is adjusted annually for inflation. This year, the district will receive $188,000 from the city.

According to the terms of the agreement, the district must use the money to keep the fields in at least “fair” condition, which requires seeding, fertilizing and aerating. Under the deal, the district may also use the money for janitorial services.

City officials expected most of the money to be used for maintaining the fields.

But the district has spent about three quarters of that money on janitorial services, while youth groups are left to play on beat-up fields or pay their way to play on well-maintained ones.

Paul Reed, Newport-Mesa’s deputy superintendent and chief business official, said the district is meeting its end of the bargain.

“What the joint-use agreement says is that the city wants to make sure the school district put in the attention necessary to maintain the fields, and we can more than prove that,” he said.

Yet, the baseball association spent more than $30,000 in the last four years to improve just two baseball fields at Kaiser Elementary School, Bell said.

“I think I have to say that we appreciate the land and the opportunity to have our baseball fields, but we are a little bit frustrated,” he said. “I think there should be more of a partnership and consideration for sports.”

Jeff Braun, commissioner of the American Youth Soccer Organization Region 97, said there’s no shortage of cleanliness, but the problem is the poor condition of the fields.

Two years ago, Braun said AYSO set aside $18,000, which was matched by the Costa Mesa United, for the district to improve two fields at Kaiser Elementary. AYSO directly paid a contractor that was hired by the district for the job.

But two months later, the fields were back in their original condition because the district doesn’t water them properly, Braun said.

“To see our fields take a beating like that after that type of investment was frustration,” he said. “... We have a problem with the fact that we are playing on mud, dirt and clumps of grass.”

Newport-Mesa Supt. Jeffrey Hubbard replied that the fields are overused.

“The fields in our community, the No. 1 story, is that they are being utilized above and beyond maximum, and all fields and every field have to have periods of rest, which allows them to regenerate,” Hubbard said. “Since we have so many different user groups using our fields, we’re doing our very best. In the end, that kind of use precludes whoever it is from keeping them in a pristine shape.”

Braun says that there’s zero rest time for the district’s fields, but the poor shape of the fields isn’t just due to heavy usage.

“It’s threefold,” he said. “Overuse, lack of water, and it’s the district’s reluctance to do the same thing the Irvine school district is doing to maintain the qualify of their fields.”

Hubbard said Irvine rotates field use to give the grass time to recover from play.

Although the agreement between the district and the city allows many kids and adults to enjoy sports, there’s a lack of communication, Braun said, and a disconnect in how the two parties view the deal, said Costa Mesa City Manager Allan Roeder.

“What we’ve said is while janitor services are part of the agreement, there are a couple of pages attached to the agreement that talk about very specific field maintenance work that would be accomplished, so we bring the fields up to a better condition,” Roeder said. “The difference of opinion exists because the district has chosen to take the largest portion by the funding and put that into janitorial service as opposed to spending it on specified identified fields improvement.”

The game’s not over. Officials from Costa Mesa plan on meeting with the district to discuss the terms of the agreement in the next two weeks.