Has the Santa Clarita City Council hit one out of the Park or will the Santa Clarita City Council be putting us out of Central Park?  

Once again at the October 9 City Council meeting city staff reiterated their position that Santa Clarita is 600 acres of parkland short.  They now have a plan to reduce that number to 565 acres.  

Parks and Recreation representatives continually tell us about the high cost of maintaining active city parkland, as if city residents are getting a free ride.  So, it is important to keep in mind that the jewel of Santa Clarita active parkland, "Central Park" was initially built with a $30 million dollar bond initiative that you can still find on your yearly property tax bill.  The land was provided by the Water District.

Now that the community has funded building this terrific park the city has backed off in the use of existing facilities.  Santa Clarita Park, once considered the best our area had to offer, sits vacant in the evenings because renovations needed to make the playing field usable has not been accomplished, joint use agreements for Sierra Vista Junior High School and North Oaks Park have been vacated and parks such as Old Orchard and Canyon Park do not have lights.  Couple this with the fact that years ago the Santa Clarita City Council decreed that Adult Sports would be 100% self sustaining.  The Adult Softball program alone provides the city close to $300,000 per year in use fees.  Add that to fees paid for adult Soccer ($431-494/team), Basketball ($341-375/team) and Volleyball ($112/team) and it starts to add up to some real money.  Next realize that all participants in youth sports get to pay an individual fee and finally if you want to reserve a park field you get to pay an hourly fee.   Currently, there is a substantial cash flow back to the city.  Remember where all the money comes from.  From us of course.  We pay for the bond to build Central Park, we pay taxes to fund Parks and Recreation and we get to pay fees to use the park.


The new Parks and Recreation proposal to alleviate a part of parks shortage is to outsource the next 35 acres to a private enterprise Big League Dreams Consulting LLC.  Don't get me wrong.  Big League Dreams Sports Parks are class acts.  If it were their intention to come to the Santa Clarita Valley as a private venture I would be all for it.  But that is not the case.  The way this works is that the city foots the bill.  We pay for the studies, land, and facilities. Big League Dreams pays nothing.  When complete the operation is turned over to Big League Dreams. They run and profit from it. Proponents argue that having the facility here will partially alleviate our parkland shortage, create Sports Tourism, support our local businesses and provide another source of revenue to the city.  I agree that it will do all those things.  But at what cost?  How big will the bond need to be? Will city leagues and programs be run out of the new facility?  Will this cause individual fees at the new facility to be going up?  Will there be a cap on Big League Dreams profit margin? Will the city have any influence over how the new facility is managed?  With transfer of city programs to Big League Dreams and subsequent reduction of revenue at Central Park, what will be the affect on that facility? The city has been studying and having discussions with Big League Dreams for over 7 years, yet these issues go unanswered.

But the biggest query of all is; If the City of Santa Clarita really believes that we have a 600 acre park deficit, has 35 acres of land that could be used for another "Central Park like" facility and is willing to put up $30 million, why aren't we already in the process of building it and letting private enterprises fund their own endeavors?

 

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