Boosters’ role in county rec

By Hannah Wever
Review Staff Writer
Published: June 12, 2008

Youth league sports need kids to play the games, parents to help and a place to hold practices and games. In Orange County, there are plenty of kids and volunteers, but whether or not there’s space to play depends on who you ask.
In the past, fractured relationships between Boosters, the county parks and recreation department and Little League organizations have contributed to a few ruffled feathers. Some parks and recreation sports’ arrangements to play at Booster Park fell through, and Little League baseball directors found themselves unable to reach an agreement to use the fields, which are owned by the county, but leased to the Boosters.
In March, the board discussed an agreement in which the county agreed to pay Boosters $10,000 for maintenance costs in return for cooperation in providing sports. Just prior to voting on the agreement, Orange County Board of Supervisors Chairman Mark Johnson said “Management of youth sports at Booster Park has chased just about everybody in the county away.”
Around the same time, while scrubbing the budget, the county’s parks and recreation department was targeted as an area in which to reduce spending. Supervisors’ decided to reduce funding for the parks and recreation to no greater than 15 percent per activity. Debra Bickley, a seemingly permanent fixture as director of the Orange County Parks and Recreation department, was fired from her post several weeks later.
In the wake of the rec department shake up, the county signed an agreement with Boosters to allow county parks and recreation football, basketball, baseball, soccer and any potential new sports to utilize Booster Park. In return for using the facilities, county officials agreed to pay the Boosters $10,000 for maintenance of the playing fields and other facilities, and for ongoing expenses.
This isn’t the first time the Boosters and county government have entered into an agreement. In 1990, Booster Park came about when the Orange County Boosters Club, leased a 17-acre tract of land on Bloomsbury Road from the county for $1 per year.
“There was a need for recreational fields at that point in time,” Orange County Attorney Todd Patrick explained. “The county and the Boosters got together and converted the land into playing fields.”
According to Orange County Administrator Bill Rolfe, in other localities sports programs are organized largely by volunteer members of the community, with minimal administrative oversight. Government involvement with parks and recreation programs in those cases consists of partnerships in which county-owned facilities are leased to a community organization, similar to the Orange County’s agreement with Booster Park.
“I think we’re moving closer to what other communities are doing,” he said.
Since that first lease between the county and the Boosters began 18 years ago, Boosters have been entirely responsible for upkeep and maintenance, and have made capital improvements like ball fields, bleachers, restrooms and concession stands. And they’ve managed to maintain that infrastructure, coordinate a number of youth league sports-and acquire a few detractors in the community and the county government.
Orange County Boosters Club President George Shifflett has pledged to hold up his end of the new agreement, and says he wants to encourage new sports to use the facilities. But some people from the youth league sports community don’t feel welcome at Booster Park, and aren’t pleased with the county’s decision to pay the Boosters.
“Some people love George, and some people hate him,” District 3 Supervisor Teel Goodwin said.
Orange County resident Jack Rickett has three children involved in youth league baseball, football and basketball. Rickett said he was recently involved in a community effort to improve youth league sports in Orange County.
About two years ago a faction of parents, including Rickett, formed a group to try to negotiate and come to a compromise. What they wanted to achieve, he said, was a unification of parks and recreation and Boosters-sponsored youth sports leagues, and an end to sports teams and schedules that conflicted and lacked a centralized game and practice venue.
An inability to reconcile multiple leagues, which were being run by separate entities in competition with one another, resulted in the deterioration of several youth sports leagues altogether.
Rickett and his parent group hoped to consolidate youth sports leagues and reach amicable arrangement between parks and recreation leagues and Boosters leagues, he said.
“Boosters agreed they would not run a basketball league as long as they received $10 per kid (based on enrollment in parks and recreation basketball). In return, they agreed to let the county use the soccer fields,” Rickett said.
And after a series of meetings, county officials decided to pay the Boosters $10,000 annually for the use of Booster Park for parks and recreation sports, according to Rickett.
Little League teams from Gordonsville and East Orange coordinated to develop a practice and game schedule at Booster Park. Rickett said the Boosters accepted the baseball schedule, and an agreement was reached that Boosters would run the concessions.
And then, “Totally out of the blue,” Rickett added, “Gordonsville Little League and East Orange Little League got a letter suggesting they were getting kicked off the fields.”
When Bickley was fired, and the board of supervisors signed an agreement with the Boosters to contribute $10,000 towards facility maintenance, Rickett said he felt betrayed.
“We wrote that agreement!” he said. “The goal was to try to put the county together,” he added. “We wrote it and turned it over to Debra (Bickley) to get the supervisors to sign it. It was our group that facilitated that.”
Rickett said he’ll be the first to commend Boosters on what they have accomplished, but he can’t support the way the organization is run.
“Nobody is saying that what they’ve done out there is not outstanding. I give them all the credit in the world for that,” Rickett said. “But now, it’s not being utilized to help the kids in the county.”
But according to Shifflett, Booster Park exists solely for the benefit of area children, and with the new agreement, the playing fields will be used by even more children than ever.
“My mission has been to provide a facility where everybody can go,” Shifflett said.
Shifflett said it has been a series of organizational problems, frequently originating in the parks and recreation department, which have prevented teams from playing at Booster Park. The breakdown of communications between Rickett, Shifflett and county officials, Shifflett explained, came about after Bickley was let go.
“We were going to try to be the centralized place to play. But all of that went by the wayside when Debra (Bickley) got fired,” he said.
The shakedown in the parks and recreation department, Shifflett said, resulted in the dissolution of communication between the county, Boosters and Rickett’s group. But per the agreement between Boosters and the county, all teams and leagues are welcome to play at Booster Park.
“The way we’ve worked it out with the county, all anybody’s got to do is call. If it’s open, they can have it. All they need to do is call and arrange,” he said.
Goodwin said he worked to finalize the agreement between Boosters and the county. With the parks and recreation department involved in a complete overhaul, Goodwin said he and District 4 Supervisor Teri Pace, wanted to assure that youth sports weren’t extinguished by a lack of facilities.
The $10,000 check from the county to the Boosters, he said, provides Boosters with resources to maintain the facility for additional teams’ use.
Goodwin said Shifflett has fans in the community; and he has adversaries. But, the objective from the county’s perspective, is to “get things lined up to play ball,” he said.
But that will only work if both the county and the Boosters live up to their end of the agreement, including working cooperatively to provide all sports, honoring commitments to schedules for shelter rentals and major events, and coordinating use of the facilities.
The agreement is good for only one year. If, next April, the agreement doesn’t seem to be working, Goodwin said county officials will reexamine it.