City agrees to pay for school field use

Costa Mesa will pitch in for maintenance costs in council-approved deal. Plan awaits yay or nay from school board.The city of Costa Mesa will pay local schools for the use of athletic fields, and the schools will take over maintenance of the fields, under an agreement the City Council has approved.

The council voted unanimously Tuesday to support changes to the joint-use agreement, which governs the use of athletic facilities controlled by the city and the Newport-Mesa Unified School District. The new agreement will be in place for five years, assuming the school board also approves it.

The agreement would give the district responsibility for all maintenance of athletic fields. Under the current plan, the city has been handling mowing and other regular maintenance.

The district also will now issue permits for facilities other than fields, such as pools, gyms and classrooms. City officials will continue to handle field-use permits.

The new agreement also requires the city to pay the schools for field maintenance -- either $170,000 per year or the annual revenues from school athletic field permits, whichever is greater.

The agreement also may offer a way to solve disagreements over field use. Currently, the school district has banned adult sports from the fields at Estancia High School, city recreation manager Jana Ransom said. That’s a problem, because there’s already a shortage of fields for adult sports, in part because the council last year voted to keep them off elementary school fields.

Once the new agreement is in place, the city can review the situation if officials think the schools are arbitrarily blocking use of some fields, Ransom said.

“We decided not to write any penalties into the ... [agreement] because we felt that the school district and the City Council need to decide what’s appropriate, and it may be different for each circumstance,” she said.

The agreement sets a new standard for field maintenance, and it would be reviewed by the city parks commission every year after the initial five-year term.

“I think that this agreement is pretty comprehensive,” City Councilwoman Katrina Foley said.

She’d still like to see the city and schools work on getting permanent restrooms at fields that don’t have them, she said.

“I think otherwise it’s a very good deal for the community, the school district and the city, and it’s definitely going to improve the standards for all fields in the city,” Foley said.

The school board could take up the agreement at its Feb. 14 meeting.

Newport-Mesa Deputy Supt. Paul Reed said he hasn’t yet seen changes made by the council Tuesday, but “We were certainly in agreement on the draft that went forward to the council.”

“We continue to believe that it’s in the best interests of all Costa Mesa citizens for the district and the city to cooperate” on the sharing of facilities, he said.

QUESTION

Is the agreement a good solution for the use and maintenance of Costa Mesa’s athletic fields? Call our Readers Hotline at (714) 966-4664 or send e-mail to dailypilot@latimes.com. Please spell your name and tell us your hometown and phone numbers for verification purposes only.