|
presentation and in response to their questions. Further, city staff never provided the existing policy to the
<br /> Commission, only their proposed new policy and outlined changes. Important changes were also excluded
<br /> from their shared documentation. This lack of providing critical information was very frustrating to some
<br /> Commissioners, yet the vote was still pushed through based upon incomplete and inaccurate information.
<br /> Specifically, the existing policy (attached) clearly states that Co-Sponsorship groups cannot be charged for
<br /> certain usage and service fees without approval of the Parks and Rec Commission and City Council (Exhibit
<br /> A, Section III-C). The new proposal eliminates this verbiage, allowing staff to unilaterally charge our groups
<br /> for these items. Staff denied that this is in the existing policy; Commissioners asked more than once if this
<br /> was the case and they were misled, impacting their decision to approve their proposal.
<br /> City staff shared with all Sports Council members that they would start charging us fees in the near future,
<br /> which is also layered into this policy. There is absolutely no transparency in what they have shared outside
<br /> of indicating that billing for different groups may start at different times and rate details will be discussed with
<br /> each Sports Council user group individually. If the city is to proceed with implementing a cost based model,
<br /> these costs should be transparent to all, consistent across all Co-Sponsor groups and with the continued
<br /> approval of the Commission and City Council. Further, these checks and balances are necessary, as this
<br /> proposal conflicts with the City of Pleasanton's General Plan through 2025 where on page 6-25, Program
<br /> 10.10 of the Public Facilities and Community Programs Element, it states: "Continue the policy of not
<br /> charging access fees for use of City Parks."
<br /> We have several other concerns with the proposed policy changes, including lowering the Co-Sponsor group
<br /> residency threshold requirement from 75% to 60%. In the report supplied to the Commission, city staff
<br /> referenced that no other surrounding city has a threshold above 60% as a key reason for their
<br /> recommendation to raise the threshold. When we provided evidence that this is not factual, and Dublin, San
<br /> Ramon, Hayward and Union City require 70-75%, there was a simple acknowledgment of the 'error', but no
<br /> explanation as to how this could happen, and continued reference to 'extensive research' they have
<br /> done. None of this research evidence has been produced, despite our request for this documentation. City
<br /> staff is suggesting that the threshold reduction is necessary for gender equity needs, but if they simply apply
<br /> the same methodology of counting participants that they themselves utilize for city run programming (per
<br /> enrolled program), this would not be an issue.
<br /> Our concern for lowering the threshold for Co-Sponsorship status is the facility capacity challenge we already
<br /> have, and we believe that lowering the threshold will worsen the situation. Further, city staff eliminated
<br /> several prudent steps that we all had to abide by to achieve this same status, including, but not limited to
<br /> providing a 3-year business plan, future growth and facility needs.
<br /> When questioned in the Commission meeting, city staff shared that the need to start charging fees was a
<br /> result of the fact that Co-Sponsored groups were not using permitted time fully and that they had just
<br /> conducted an audit to support this. However, the city staff recommendation for this proposal (which
<br /> eliminated 'no fee' verbiage and required Commission and City Council approval for the charging of fees),
<br /> was written on August 10th, 2023 (attached) and their audit did not begin until August 28, 2023. Additionally,
<br /> we first learned of this audit during this Commission meeting, which demonstrates the current lack of
<br /> collaboration between city staff and our groups.
<br /> City staff met with us on Tuesday, September 26th to review their audit findings, which they are going to
<br /> present to the Commission and/or City Council as further documentation on this issue. To do so would be
<br /> grossly unjust as they informed us for the first time in this meeting of process changes relative to scheduling,
<br /> yet applied those rules to prior bookings, included days which they originally acknowledged were poor air
<br /> quality days due to recent wildfires, included audits after sunset on fields with no lights, audited a field which
<br /> does not exist, audited a field we have never used, and noted that we did not use a facility which we have
<br /> hundreds of members (coaches, players and parents across nearly 10 teams) that can attest otherwise. Not
<br /> only are these corrections vital for an accurate audit, but not notifying us of procedural changes in advance
<br /> of the audit, suggests that the data was contrived to support the fee-based model city staff is endorsing. The
<br /> critical first step to ensure we are all on the same page regarding facility usage is for city staff to create the
<br /> 6
<br />
|