- November 15, 2024
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Palm Coast Little League has held practices and games at Indian Trails Sports Complex for close to a decade. But the city has shoved the players off their home base to make way for out-of-owners bringing in out-of-town dollars, and league officials are calling foul.
The dispute centers around two weekends and a week this coming spring. The city wants them for a tournament and a visiting high school team. The league, which has a contract with the city, says it should have priority.
League Vice President Doug Berryhill brought copies of that contract to a City Council meeting Dec. 15, saying the city had violated the terms under which it’s supposed to handle allocation of the fields, and that it has done so rudely — simply ordering the league to step aside after the city made an agreement with an out-of-town, for-profit league.
“That contract stipulates that we have preferred participant rights in terms of those fields during that time period,” Berryhill told council members during the meeting’s public comment period. “If entities outside of the Little League are to be allocated time slots at the Indian Trails Sports Complex, there’s a process that has to be used.”
But the process wasn’t followed, Berryhill said.
Instead, the league simply received an email Nov. 17 from Parks and Recreation Director Luanne Santangelo saying the league would have to play and practice elsewhere April 22-24 and May 20-22 to make way for a for-profit league called Triple Crown Sports, and share the facility with a visiting high school baseball team March 26 to April 1.
Santangelo wrote that the Little League could use the fields at Seminole Woods Neighborhood Park and Holland Park, facilities Berryhill called inadequate.
"We all agreed that a good way to fund the (Indian Trails Sports Complex) maintenance was … to go out and recruit tournaments."
— Jim Landon, city manager
Patrick Johnan, writing for the Little League’s board, emailed City Council members and the city administration last week to say the city’s actions violated its contract with the league.
The league “believes the benefit of travel baseball/softball tournaments in no way justifies the city violating the terms of the agreement between the city and PCLL,” he wrote. “The children of Palm Coast should not be penalized (through) the contracting of city facilities to ‘for profit’ organizations.”
The city’s contract with the league gives it preferential “proportional rights” to the Indian Trails Sports Complex facility.
"Little League shall have primary proportional right to use the Complex between January 15 through July 31 and between September 1 through November 30 of each year,” the contract states. If another group wants to use the fields, it continues, “The proportional usage shall be based upon a lottery system ... in which the Little League would be awarded a number of draws proportionate to the number of participants in the programs of the Little League” relative to other organizations’ programs.
That never happened, Johnan wrote.
“Little League has received no notification from the city regarding a lottery of any type,” he wrote.
At the meeting Dec. 15, City Manager Jim Landon said the city wasn’t following the lottery process outlined in the contract because the teams it had attracted were there for tournaments, and the contract doesn’t specifically address tournaments.
“There is a misunderstanding,” Landon said. “In this case, we’re not allocating the use of those fields to this other organization; this is a tournament. ... This is the first time we’ve been able to recruit baseball tournaments for a couple of weekends. This is something that came through the Tourism Development Council. ... So this is in essence a city event on city fields.”
“We’re not allocating the fields to an outside organization,” he continued. “We’ve been given clear direction to go out and recruit tournaments, working with TDC. If City Council wants to give local organizations priority of the fields, I guarantee you soccer would be happy to say, ‘We trump any lacrosse tournament.’”
Landon noted that the city has a contract with Little League because the league added a building at Indian Trails Sports Complex, so it has more of a stake in the facility. But, he said, it also doesn’t pay for the upkeep of the fields — something the tournaments help with.
“A few years ago, we proposed that all our local groups help pay for the maintenance of our fields, and those groups came out and said, ‘Whoa whoa, we are not for profit. ... We really don’t want to pay a fee to use the fields.’ Which is very unusual. But we all agreed that a good way to fund the maintenance was … to go out and recruit tournaments,” Landon said.
Councilman Bill McGuire asked how much it cost to maintain the facility. Landon didn’t have a number available, but said it was substantial.
Councilman Steve Nobile was wary of Landon’s understanding that the contract’s process doesn’t pertain to tournaments.
“I don’t want to use ‘tomayto, tomahto,’ ‘well this isn’t this and this isn’t that.’ I just want to show them that we’re appreciative of their community service,” he said. “What I don’t want to do is create an unnecessary or high level of heartache for a local community event. ... I just want to make sure we’re working with them closely.”
