LETTERS: Frontier Little League Leaders Question Increase of Recreation Fees by Cerritos City Council

Los Cerritos Community Newspaper has received several letters and comments regarding the fee increase proposal by the Cerritos City Council. If you have an opinion about the situation, please feel free to comment below this post, or send your email to [email protected]

Dear Editor:
FYI…certainly the objective is to increase revenue. However, if you run these groups out of town or out of business, there will be NO revenue. Then you could use paid staff to organize leagues, which will be much more expensive than the current volunteer system.
Seems a little harsh to be drawing a line in the sand over $7,000. Is the City of Cerritos really that broke?? If it is, someone has not been minding the store.

Samantha Simpson

Hello Parents,
This past weekend, an article appeared in the Los Cerritos Community News that took us all by surprise. On Monday, November 5, 2012, City of Cerritos Recreation Services Superintendent Sherre Titus presented a recommendation to the Cerritos City Council that would implement a new $5/hour per field fee and an increase in related fees for sports organizations that use Cerritos athletic fields. We are one of those organizations. The City Council voted unanimously to approve this recommendation and it is scheduled to take effect on April 1, 2013. Our estimate is that these new fees will cost Frontier Youth Baseball League approximately $7000 for this Spring season alone.
Understand that neither our League President Ron Lacayo nor our Board of Directors were made aware that this recommendation was going before the City Council. It appears that the other youth sports leagues in Cerritos were in the same position because none of them were at the City Council meeting. We strongly believe that we should have been notified by Recreation Services in order to be able to provide the City Council with our perspective before they voted.
Ron and I have a meeting tonight regarding field allocation for the Spring season with the City of Cerritos and other sports leagues. After the meeting, Ron and I will e-mail you additional information regarding these fees and a plan of action. At the very least we are going to try and delay the implementation of these fees until after the conclusion of our season. We have already prepared our budget for the Spring and it did not include $7000 in field use fees. If these fees were collected this year, it would have a significant adverse effect on our baseball program.
At this point, please keep Monday, November 19th at 7:00 PM free on your calendars. That is the next City Council meeting at Cerritos City Hall. We will be asking for families and players to show up in force to support our position.
Please look for a follow-up e-mail later tonight. We will keep you updated.

Gene Luevano
Vice President
Frontier Youth Baseball League