As a rec ball coach and father of three who have all played, it is important to keep the cost burden down on the parents of these athletes. It pays to invest in these kids future.

It’s important to keep assess to sports accessible to everyone!! We should also protect & maintain our green space fiercely, while keeping sports affordable for everyone!!

This impacts all of the kids that are involved in these activities. My son will be playing in a couple of years and we are worried these organizations will no longer exist due to the expense of it all. These are the types of activities we want our youth involved in and staying busy with. It does not make sense that we are paying 21k for unkept fields and high rates. Where is this money going to?

Affordable for families

Youth baseball is an important outlet for many young people in our community. I don’t want costs to become an issue for teams in any part of Salt Lake City.

My kids play baseball and I can’t continue to afford all the costs

Salt lake needs to offer fields for less. They don’t compare to other areas of the valley, we have to work with what we have available so fields can be used

My boys all played foothill baseball and it was a wonderful experience, with parents as volunteers and many new lessons and friends. Community sports should be affordable so everyone can participate.

The families who volunteer to run youth baseball leagues are doing a lot of heavy lifting (literally) to maintain public spaces that are used by the broader public. As the number of kids in the city continues to decrease, so does meaningful access to healthy recreation for kids in the city. Reducing league fees respects the work that families already put in to make their communities a better place. When youth leagues incur larger fees from the city (without investment in our infrastructure) we have to raise league fees which is not sustainable for the families we serve.

Keep sports affordable

Little League fees are becoming exorbitant. I shouldn’t have to travel to a different city or county to have access to affordable sports programs that are of similar quality.

I am the VP of Foothill Youth Baseball. We try hard to provide instructional baseball to elementary school kids at an affordable price. The field rates are excessive and create a real burden for our nonprofit organization.

Because kids should be able to play baseball without crazy fees being imposed.

Affordable sports fees in support of keeping our community healthy and connected is vital for our well being.

This is troublesome that so much money is coming into the coffers but there's a lack of upkeep is concerning . I hope for an audit of where the money is being spent, with solutions that benefit the community it's meant to serve.

It is important to keep fees reasonable for the legacy of this sport.

Let's make recreation accessible to all of our residents and not price out families. Please encourage our city government to help maintain the fields. Increasing the rates without accountability for the property maintenance seems unreasonable. Let's make this better for the community.

My son participates. Rising costs are killing opportunities in our area.

With the costs of rental fees on all fields for all sports, rec leagues with have to raise their fees for kids to play in all sports. Not all parents can afford to pay for comp team fees. That is why it is important to have Rec leagues

opportunity for children.

As a single mom in SLC, baseball and sports complex rentals should be affordable. The city shouldn't be profiting off of something like this.

Come on, rec youth sports are central to upbringing of kids, community togetherness, learning fair play, learning teamwork, etc. Don't burden families who would be on the fence about it with a good reason to not play.

My 6 year old son, who has autism and ADHD, has benefitted greatly from the physical, mental, and social benefits of playing baseball. The organization and coaches that run these programs work so hard and it's absurd to think they are operating in the red because of field rental fees. Our community is in desperate need of more supports for struggling families, and organized sports are a huge way to help accomplish that.

Kids who play organized sports are known to do better in school, stay out of trouble, and learn life long skills. Why are we making it harder for low income families? Every child needs this opportunity!

Baseball is a sport that unites kids and families from diverse socioeconomic groups. The price the city is charging for field leasing is far more expensive (more than double) than county fields in the area. The city has also more than doubled the hourly usage rate over the past for years, and 9.5x over the past 9 years. Unfortunately, this has drastically increased the cost for nonprofit leagues and makes the higher registration cost a financial barrier for many families. Also, the city does very little if any maintenance or improvements to the fields. The city fields are among the worst maintained fields in the valley.

Youth sports participation is essential to developing young people

Local youth sports are a great way to draw involvement from folks around the neighborhood that wouldn’t normally get to know one another. These types of price increases reduce involvement from those who would greatly benefit from association with others within the community. There are tools and resources the city should use to keep these fees low in order continue and promote high rates of participation among youth sports.

My kids want to play baseball but I’m not sure I can afford the rise in fees. I certainly believe sports should be available to everybody.

I want to keep baseball and other sports affordable. I feel like with these rates, lower income families and even middle class. Families are going to get priced out.

For the future of recreation baseball

My kids love baseball and we have really appreciated the many options for recreational, reasonably priced (not competitive) leagues.