Fresno has set its own fees for Granite Park after taking over its operations from the Central Valley Community Sports Foundation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While the rates were approved by a majority of the council, Councilman Miguel Arias cast the lone vote in opposition, saying parents should not be charged to watch their kids play sports.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Driving the news: The city is taking over the operation of Granite Park after a court decision two weeks ago that removed the Central Valley Community Sports Foundation following a drawn-out eviction battle.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last year, the city terminated the lease with the foundation in part due to not paying rent and other expenses.\u00a0<\/p>\n
City Manager Georgeanne White announced at the time of the takeover that the city would honor existing reservations to provide a seamless transition for the community.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The big picture: With the city taking over Granite Park operations, it needed to set a master fee schedule in order to have the legal ability to collect fees from leagues that reserve baseball and soccer fields.\u00a0<\/p>\n
White said during Thursday\u2019s council meeting that the city plans to operate Granite Park similar to how it operates the Regional Sports Complex in southwest Fresno.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What it costs: The city will charge leagues $700 to $2,050 per day to reserve soccer fields, depending on the number of fields they request.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nonprofit organizations can rent the soccer, baseball and softball fields for $25 for a four-hour block.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The fee schedule also puts Granite Park in line with the city\u2019s other parks that charge admission fees, ranging from $2 to $16 based on the number of people attending.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What they\u2019re saying: White said people are currently being charged admission fees for baseball, but the soccer league that currently rents Granite Park covers the cost for attendees.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are intending to try and operate as close to the Regional Sports model and how the users of the park who currently have reservations have been operating to hold them harmless,\u201d White told the council.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After a long back-and-forth discussion about the city\u2019s takeover of Granite Park, Arias boiled down his opposition to the admission fees.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s clear that city staff\u2019s intention is to charge a gate fee into the park for parents to watch their kids play,\u201d Arias said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Arias asked City Attorney Andrew Janz to provide a memo on if the city can charge admission fees for parks funded by Measure P, noting that Granite Park \u201cis being fixed and funded\u201d by the tax.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fresno has set its own fees for Granite Park after taking over its operations from the Central Valley…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-375415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}