WSA_Youth and Family Master Plan Phase I - September 2009

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Key informant interviews The key informant interviews demonstrated that the city and school district have converged in recent years to:1) coordinate field-use fees and 2) coordinate field reservation systems. Nonetheless, at this time, there remains no overarching system that safeguards the field reservation process against one league securing fields from one agency (the City}, then going to the next agency (SAUSD) and securing more fields. This is in part because verifying residency of soccer players is atime-consuming and often difficult endeavor. The Parks & Recreation field reservation staff use GIS programming to allocate fields to leagues based on a combination of factors: where the players live, what percentage of players are in a certain league and each league's need for fields. City recreation programming staff noted that the GIS mapping of players and team-use does not always serve its full function. Simply because the majority of youth on a particular team live closest to a particular field, it did not necessitate they will be set to play their team games at that field every time. Field reservation staff noted the following considerations are made when delegating field permits to leagues throughout the year: / Time of year / Field closures / Size of field / Lights or no lights at field / Geographical location of players / Location desirability The City of Santa Ana designates field use to leagues every six months: once in January, then again in June. City staff have been trying to verify player-residency for several years, but it is too time-consuming to warrant valuable, limited, staff time. SAUSD representatives also noted that, at this time, although the district has administrative regulations regarding field use, they are not implemented consistently. In September of each year, SAUSD gives permission for certain leagues to use particular fields for the upcoming school year. Essentially, the only regulation that is consistently implemented is a rule that "fhere is no soccer on baseball fields and no baseball on soccer fields". Although the city staff report that the leagues do respect the past-year's field use decisions and self- regulate, the different registration schedules leave a gap in coordination of annual field use. This lack of systematic oversight of the leagues has allowed for them to operate outside of a systematized process for most of their history in Santa Ana. Leagues also noted that scheduling fields for practice is still a problem due to a lack of maintenance on certain fields, combined with the overall shortage of fields. Schools are often closed, so youth cannot use them regularly for practice. Therefore, often times the youth practice on their own at a location they find open space available. If coordination of field reservations could be combined into one citywide system, this could potentially increase the availability of practice fields for the youth teams. SAUSD currently requires each league to submit an application for field use whereas in the past, the field reservation was coordinated internally at each school site. Essentially, soccer schedules are based on what each league requests at the beginning of each school year September. Furthermore, coordination is also an issue at the internal league-level. The leagues do not have a system to coordinate the teams' fields based on the location of the youth in the league. The leagues continue to have the right to place teams anywhere in the city-regardless of where players live. For example, according to City staff, some leagues are allotted certain fields independent of where their players reside. In the 2005-2006 season, the leagues with largest number of players would be allocated the most fields.