Frequently Asked Questions

• What is Tri-Sports?

  • West University Tri-Sports Association is a non-profit charitable organization with three members: West University Little League (WULL), West University Softball Association (WUSA), and West University Soccer (WUSC, a division of Rise Soccer Club). The mission of Tri-Sports is to manage, maintain, and operate the youth sports fields located on publicly owned lands at West University Elementary School, West University Recreation Center, and Pershing Middle School.

• Why does Tri-Sports get public funding?

  • Parks and recreation is a core local governmental function. Providing fields and facilities for children to play is a core parks and recreation responsibility. In our City, that responsibility has been delegated in large part to Tri-Sports. In the traditional model, the parks and recreation department of a local municipality would construct and maintain youth sports fields and facilities on public parkland for use by organized youth sports leagues. Often, the parks and recreation department would also run and administer the leagues themselves, with City personnel handling league marketing efforts, player registration, coach recruitment and training, team assignments and drafts, uniform and equipment orders, game and practice schedules, and referee/umpire training and hiring.

  • In response to resident demand, the City of West U tried its hand at youth sports in the 1970s, leasing field space from West U Elementary, committing to improve and maintain those fields, and briefly running soccer and softball leagues of its own. By all accounts, the results left much to be desired. With the City’s blessing, in the late 1970s, WUSA and WUSC joined WULL as independent entities organized to take over all aspects of league operation and administration. At the City’s urging, in the early 1980s, the leagues took over the management and maintenance of the fields as well. The City’s proposition was a simple one: if the leagues would provide the people-power to take over the City’s lease obligation to maintain the playing fields at WUE, the City would provide funding. For nearly 40 years, leadership at Tri-Sports and the City upheld their ends of the spirit of that bargain. Today, the City seeks to pull out of the partnership.

• Does any other city or entity provide Tri-Sports funding?

  • Yes. The City of Southside Place has always funded Tri-Sports at a proportional rate to West U, given its smaller population and participant group. In fact, SSP has already approved Tri-Sports funding for 2020. In addition, when Tri-Sports was originally formed, the leagues took advantage of a matching funds program offered by HISD, which essentially doubled the cities’ contributions to Tri-Sports maintenance efforts. When HISD discontinued that program in 1987, the leagues picked up the difference. Since 1987, the basic funding model has been that West U and Southside Place together covered about half the maintenance and improvement costs for the Tri-Sports fields, and the three member leagues through Tri-Sports covered the remainder.

• So how much does it cost to operate the Tri-Sports fields?

  • There are 12 Tri-Sports fields, covering 13 acres of land. The total cost to maintain those fields on an annual basis is right at $250,000. That covers the costs of mowing, trimming, aerating, insecticide, mosquito fogging, weed control, fertilizer, turf repair, tractor repair, irrigation, irrigation system repair, fence handling and storage, fence and gate repair, cleaning, sweeping, trash collection, security patrol, electricity, lighting system repair, lamp and fuse replacement, scoreboard repair, porta potties (as needed and for special events), field raking and dragging, clay and dirt conditioning, field chalking and painting, and drying agents. In addition, over the years Tri-Sports has made a series of major capital investments in those fields. Over the last 12+ years, those capital improvement expenses have averaged over $100,000 per year. So the total improvement and maintenance cost for the Tri-Sports fields, at least for the last decade-plus, has been about $350,000 per year.

• How does that cost compare to other similar organizations?

  • We do not believe there are many other organizations like Tri-Sports, but the management of the Tri-Sports fields has been extraordinarily efficient. There has been a significant amount of recent study and attention given to sports field maintenance and management, largely in the context of debates about the costs and benefits of artificial turf fields as compared to natural grass surfaces. In those studies, the average “all in” cost of maintaining a natural grass field is most often reported as being somewhere between $40,000 and $50,000 per year. Of course, costs vary with the size and types of fields at issue, but given that the size of a full-size football or soccer field is about one acre, and that Tri-Sports manages playing fields on 13 acres, it is obvious that the leagues and Tri-Sports have been extraordinarily good stewards. This is due in no small part to the fact that so much of the work involved and expended on behalf of Tri-Sports is by volunteers, hundreds upon hundreds of them, from the Tri-Sports member leagues.

• What would it cost the City to take over field maintenance responsibilities?

  • Well, we’ve tried that before, but here is a data point. Outside the fields managed by Tri-Sports, the West U Parks system consists of 7 parks totaling 6.41 acres. For 2019, the West U budget line item for parks maintenance was $609,800 (which does not include the Colonial Park pool or Rec Center building, which are separately budgeted). That’s $95,133 per acre. By comparison, the total operation and maintenance figure for the Tri-Sports fields is either $26,923 per acre (including capital expenses) or $19,231 per acre (not including capital expenses).

• Wait a minute. Doesn’t HISD maintain the West U Elementary fields?

  • No. Tri-Sports handles and manages all aspects of field and green space improvement, repair, and maintenance at WUE. The lease terms applicable at WUE (and Pershing, for that matter) are that HISD offers the land for use by Tri-Sports in exchange for its maintenance and upkeep by Tri-Sports. Therefore, in addition to the children that play baseball, softball, and soccer on those fields, every child that has attended WUE in the past 40 years has been a direct beneficiary of the work of Tri-Sports. The same applies for the West U citizenry at large, since when not in use by the school or the leagues, the fields are available for use as public parks. You think that the relationship between the City and WUE is important to the character of our City? Or to your family? Or to your property values? Your City leaders are about to kill the public-private partnership that has been a cornerstone of that relationship for four decades.

• So how much is the West U contribution to Tri-Sports?

  • For the past five years, the West U cash support for Tri-Sports has been $125,000 per year. In addition, the City has provided certain benefits (primarily utilities) that it characterizes as “in kind” contributions. Though these benefits are quite the story all their own, as further explained below, the in-kind amount that the City certified to Tri-Sports for 2018 for purposes of inclusion on the Tri-Sports tax return was about $29,000. Combining these cash and non-cash figures, the total West U contribution to Tri-Sports is $154,000, or about $10 per West U resident per year. Tri-Sports has not asked for and does not expect any need for a funding increase from the City in the foreseeable future. (Try finding any other item in the West U City budget that has stayed flat over the last five years, let alone as projected on a go-forward basis.)

• And what is West U proposing going forward?

  • The Mayor and City Council have voted to cut the entire $125,000 cash payment to Tri-Sports from the City’s 2020 budget. The City has agreed to continue to provide in-kind services, previously valued by the City at $29,000, on the condition that Tri-Sports continue to maintain the Rec Center fields and the playing fields at WUE. These in-kind services consist of water, electricity, and trash services at the Rec Center fields, and water and trash services at the WUE fields.

  • According to the City, there is also a $2,700 in-kind rental value associated with the City’s making the Scout House available to the Tri-Sports leagues for meetings. Tri-Sports disputes this is really a “contribution,” as the City has always urged the leagues to use the Scout House “free of charge.” Now that we’re in essence being presented with a bill for the rental, the leagues will not continue to make use of the space. As it is, most league meetings occur on the fields themselves, or in private residences or businesses, or in the meeting room at the McGovern Park complex, or at the Southside Place community center.

  • Furthermore, there appears to be something wrong with the City’s water figures. The City attributed more than $17,000 of its in-kind services number for 2018 to providing water at the Rec Center fields and the WUE fields. There is no functioning irrigation system at the Scout House fields, so this figure apparently covers the 2 acre field at the Rec Center and the remaining 5 acres of fields at WUE (7 acres total). The members of Tri-Sports are also members of the Greater West U Area Sports Association, which owns and operates the 7.5 acre McGovern Park sports field complex. The total water bill for 2018 at that complex was less than $7,000.

  • Further mistakes in the City’s calculations would not be surprising. During the course of discussions with the City over just the past three months, the City Manager has publicly represented the value of these in-kind services as $50,000, then $48,000, then finally admitted they were less than $30,000, when pressed to specifically identify the electricity meters the City was claiming to cover. At that point, the City acknowledged it had been erroneously attributing the City’s electricity costs at the Scout House building and a City pump station to the Tri-Sports fields.

  • All told, Tri-Sports estimates that the true value of in-kind services provided by the City to Tri-Sports is likely somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000 per year.

• But I thought that the Mayor said the City was still providing Tri-Sports with $130,000 worth of support going forward?

  • Deep breath here. To put it in the nicest possible terms, this is fantasy. The Mayor gets to his figure by rounding up the in-kind services number discussed above to $30,000, and then—out of the blue—adding $100,000 for the “value” of the City providing the Rec Center fields to the leagues without charging rent. That number in and of itself is pretty out there, but the entire concept of “free” field space is unsupportable and wrong on a number of levels.

  • First, although sports fields do have real estate value, the $100,000 figure is out of thin air. The Tri-Sports members are in the field management business (albeit on a volunteer basis), and they understand the rental value of playing fields. The Rec Center fields, in an open market, would have a rental value of no more than $100 per hour of use on a combined basis (and that’s high, since they are not full-sized fields). The spring and fall sports seasons are each three and a half months long, or about 100 calendar days. A $100,000 rental valuation for the Rec Center fields would have those fields in use and fully rented for five hours a day, every day, seven days a week, holidays included, with no rain outs, for the entirety of the spring and fall sports seasons. That assumption is preposterous.

  • Furthermore, the Tri-Sports members are also well familiar with the types of organizations that are in the market for renting youth sports fields. They are largely, if not entirely, for-profit “select” or “travel” teams that condition membership on skill level and ability to pay. Is that what West U residents want on their public lands? The Tri-Sports leagues are recreational youth sports programs, open to all age-eligible children in our community, without regard to skill level or previous experience, and with a focus on keeping the costs of participation affordable through reliance on volunteer labor and concentrated community fundraising. If the goal really is, as Council has stated, making sure that West U kids are using West U fields, renting the Rec Center to the highest bidder would be a strange way to pursue that interest.

  • Next, the Mayor’s analysis misses a fundamental point. The City is not providing the Rec Center fields “free of charge.” Tri-Sports is paying for its use of those fields, and the agreement as to cost is set by contract, in the memorandum of understanding executed annually by the City and Tri-Sports. The terms of that contract are that the City provides the Rec Center fields in exchange for the Tri-Sports commitments to maintain them, and to maintain the WUE fields, and to operate recreational baseball, softball, and soccer programs for the benefit of at least 1,000 West U children annually. As detailed above, the amounts expended annually by Tri-Sports on just the maintenance aspect of this bargain are many times the (even artificially inflated) amount the Mayor claims those fields are worth.

  • And we have not even discussed the fact that Tri-Sports actually built those fields, such that whatever market value they might have is much more attributable to the Tri-Sports capital investments in them, as opposed to any money or effort expended by the City.

• What do you mean Tri-Sports built the Rec Center fields? I thought the voters passed a bond referendum on the Rec Center that would cover those costs?

  • You are right. But it did not happen that way. When the City built the Rec Center building, cost overruns meant there was no money left to fund the promised reconstruction of the Rec Center fields. So the City again came to Tri-Sports, and asked for the leagues’ help. The City installed the lighting, and Tri-Sports paid for the rest (and managed the project), including field grading and dirt work, irrigation system installation, sports turf/grass, fence work, backstops, dugouts, and safety netting. In all, Tri-Sports spent $220,000 on construction of the Rec Center fields. In return, the then-City Manager expressed the City’s utmost appreciation and committed to work to bring the City’s annual cash contribution to Tri-Sports in line with the 50/50 arrangement on which the relationship had been founded, including the leagues’ capital investments. In emails that Tri-Sports has shared with the current Council, the then-City Manager asked that if the City’s annual contribution to Tri-Sports was raised to $125,000, would the leagues agree not to request further increases to that amount for a period of five years. Now, five years later, the City has conveniently forgotten the history of how the Rec Center fields were developed, and instead voted to cut its Tri-Sports funding obligation altogether.

• So is there a “real” number that fairly reflects the value West U provides to Tri-Sports by allowing use of the Rec Center fields?

  • Interesting question. And yes, there is a net value, but the City is already claiming it. We’ve already discussed the costs of maintaining youth sports fields and their approximate rental value, and the fact that the memorandum of understanding between the City and Tri-Sports is based on an exchange of field use rights for maintenance and upkeep. In fact, the vast majority of public/private field use agreements for youth sports fields are struck on that basis: field use for field maintenance. That’s also the structure of the HISD leases for the fields at WUE and Pershing. In addition, two of the Tri-Sports members have field use agreements with Harris County for field space in County parks, and that’s the basis of those agreements as well. On that basis, where the field maintenance cost is in essence the price of field use, the utilities that the City pays at the Rec Center fields, to the extent they are part of those field maintenance costs, would be net value to Tri-Sports. However, as explained above, the City is already accounting for that value in the in-kind services number it claims to provide to Tri-Sports each year.

• Okay, if field use and field maintenance are normally an even swap, why should the City make additional cash contributions to Tri-Sports?

  • Now we are getting to the heart of the matter. If the City owned all the Tri-Sports fields, the situation might be different. But of the 13 acres of Tri-Sports fields, the City owns only 2. The rest of those fields are owned by HISD. And they were all constructed by Tri-Sports. And they are all maintained by Tri-Sports. And they are operated by Tri-Sports for the specific governmental purpose of providing green space and facilities on which the children of our community can play. So if the City is providing value to Tri-Sports at the Rec Center, then Tri-Sports is providing something like five times or more value to the City, because Tri-Sports is the primary conduit through which the City is fulfilling one of its parks and recreation obligations to West U residents.

  • Sound crazy? Don’t think Tri-Sports is performing a public function? Just take a look at the City’s official West U Parks map. Locate the WUE school location and check out the map legend. The description for park #5 is “Youth Athletic Fields (at West U Elementary): Four lighted baseball fields, three lighted softball fields, three lighted soccer fields.” The City does not own the fields. It did not build the fields. It did not pay for the lights. It does not operate the fields. Nor does it maintain them. But the City claims those fields as part of its official Parks portfolio. Its only basis for doing so is the financial support the City has historically provided to Tri-Sports.

• What about the Piranhas? Do they get City funding?

  • No. The West U Piranhas swim team does not get City funding. They do however execute a memorandum of understanding with the City on an annual basis, just like Tri-Sports, that permits them access rights to the West U Rec Center pool. The reason that the Piranhas do not receive additional funding is pretty simple. The Piranhas did not build the pool. Nor do they maintain it. Like the Piranhas, the Tri-Sports leagues raise all the funds necessary to run the administrative side of their respective sports programs through registration fees and sponsorships. And for the record, we are big fans of the Piranhas program (chomp).

• Well, what about the fields at Pershing? Why are they in the Tri-Sports system?

  • Another great question, and yes, the Pershing fields are not in West U. They are actually 900 feet (3 short blocks) from West U. And they are 350 feet (1 short block) from Southside Place. And Pershing is of course where West U children are zoned to attend public middle school. Regardless of location, however, these fields are in the Tri-Sports system because their development was necessary to support the rapid growth in the Tri-Sports leagues in the late 1980s. Given space constraints at the fields at WUE, the number of children that wanted to play in the Tri-Sports leagues exceeded the capacity of available fields. The options were two: either cut programs or find new fields.

  • The development of the Pershing fields allowed WULL and WUSA to continue to offer programs for older children (over age 12), which in turn permitted the reconfiguration of the fields at WUE to accommodate more (but smaller) fields, which in turn enabled the development of more sports programs for younger children (under age 8). Ever been to the WUSA parade or WULL opening day? The Pixie program in softball and the Peewee program in baseball were made possible by the Tri-Sports efforts to secure and build the Pershing fields.

• So why do I keep hearing that only a small percentage of the children who play in Tri-Sports are West U residents?

  • This is the current City Council’s favorite narrative. And the next sentence is always that we cannot use West U taxpayer dollars to subsidize non-West U residents. On behalf of the Tri-Sports leagues, we cannot be emphatic enough when we say this narrative is FALSE, WRONG, and MISLEADING. Think about this one with us, and we are confident you will conclude that this line of argument by current City leaders demonstrates tremendously bad thinking and bad judgment.

  • Tri-Sports historical documents reflect that there were about 700 West U children that participated in Tri-Sports programs in 1984. Today, that number is over 1,100. When Southside Place children are included, the number is closer to 1,250. Neither the City’s population nor its number of households has grown at nearly that rate during that time. Rather, over the years, more and more of our community’s children have participated in youth sports. In particular, the athletic opportunities available to young girls in our City have expanded greatly.

  • Based on calculations based on zip code registration data and the most recent census numbers, half of all the children in West University Place and Southside Place between the ages of 6 and 8 are currently playing in one of the Tri-Sports member leagues. 50%. One out of every two. We have challenged the City to come up with any other City-funded program or facility that touches so many families in our community at the same time. Crickets.

  • Instead, the Mayor in particular has focused hyperbolic rhetoric on the children that play in Tri-Sports that do not reside in West U. Now, as an initial point, the City has so badly bungled these calculations that their data does not resemble reality. We have repeatedly tried to correct their calculations, but to little avail. And the local press just repeats the City’s errors. So here’s the truth. About 46% of WULL and 35% of WUSA spring season players are West U or Southside residents. The number for fall soccer is much lower (14%), but there is a reason for that.

  • Through the success of West U Soccer Club, the club expanded to absorb leagues in several other communities, including Bellaire, Sugar Land, Pearland, Humble, and others, all under an umbrella organization now called Rise Soccer Club, which has been tremendously successful. Although these programs now operate under a single umbrella organization, the local recreational leagues are all still in place in their respective neighborhoods, just as they have been for decades. Therefore, the kids that play recreational soccer on the Tri-Sports fields are the children that are from the West U area, and the same applies to the leagues that operate in other communities. But the Mayor has seized upon the structure of the soccer club as a basis to claim incredulously that West U taxpayers are now subsidizing children from Katy. Not that subsidizing children anywhere is a bad thing. But the Mayor’s analysis, which he has described as “the main issue” supporting the City’s discontinuation of funding, is just wrong.

  • Due to their success, attributable in no small part to the support that the City has provided to Tri-Sports over the decades, each of the three member leagues has prospered and grown. Therefore, they have been in positions to aid other area leagues that have not proven as stable, including those that experienced financial troubles or those that suddenly lost their field space due to school construction or commercial development.

  • By the City’s judgment, when WULL merged with Braes Little League, its value to the City of West U was somehow diminished, even though West U resident participation in the league continued to grow, and even though the increased size of the league opened up new opportunities for West U residents that had not existed previous to the merger. The same applies to WUSA’s growth when it took on the players from Bellaire Softball, when that league folded in 2011. From the City’s perspective, it apparently would have been better for the league to have turned those players away. Maybe those girls could just move to another community, or find another sport to play.

  • We understand the simplistic appeal of the City’s subsidy argument, but it just does not apply here for this very important reason: As the leagues have grown, and taken on players from other neighborhoods, those players have not just been squeezed onto the existing Tri-Sports field footprint. Instead, the leagues have developed other fields, outside the Tri-Sports system, to accommodate their growth. The fields that are not in the Tri-Sports system are not managed by Tri-Sports, and they therefore do not benefit from Tri-Sports funds. In many cases, in fact, those other fields are managed by other independent organizations, with separate books and records.

  • For example, the fields at South Campus are owned and operated by South Campus Sports Association, which receives no funding from West U or Southside Place. The same applies for the fields at McGovern Park, which is owned and operated by the Greater West U Area Sports Association. In short, as the leagues have grown to encompass players from outside our neighborhood, the field portfolios of those leagues have expanded commensurately and West U tax dollars do not support fields and facilities outside the Tri-Sports system.

  • We know these numbers, because we manage them carefully. Remember that 46% of WULL players are from West U and Southside Place? Well, over 56% of the WULL baseball field space is outside the Tri-Sports system. How about the 35% resident registration figure for WUSA? Over 74% of WUSA’s softball field space is somewhere other than Tri-Sports campuses. In other words, the resident registration percentages for the leagues are proportional to the percentages of field space operated by the leagues for which Tri-Sports seeks West U and Southside Place public support. To the extent those percentages differ, in fact, in the language of the City’s narrative, it’s actually the non-resident players that are subsidizing West U taxpayers, not the other way around.

  • Put another way, if the Tri-Sports leagues suddenly limited participation to only residents of West U and Southside Place, and told everyone else to go find somewhere else to play, it would take every field in the Tri-Sports 13-acre system to make these new residents-only leagues workable. In fact, in such an alternative universe, the opportunities available to West U and Southside Place children would be more limited than they are now. If only the Tri-Sports fields were available, there would be no baseball program for WULL children over 13, and there would be no WUSA softball available to girls over 10, at least without significant reconfiguration and reassignment of the existing fields. In addition, there would be no fall ball for baseball or softball and no spring season for soccer either.

  • So we hope it’s clear, once considered by careful minds, that West U’s funding of Tri-Sports does not subsidize non-West U residents. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Tri-Sports is subsidizing the City and doing so enthusiastically. West U’s funding covers less than half the costs to operate and maintain the fields that are necessary to support basic youth sports opportunities for the children of West U residents. City funding fulfills less than half of that basic governmental function. And that’s just considering the out of pocket economic costs. To calculate the true costs, you’d have to value the untold volunteer hours expended by Tri-Sports representatives and parents and other friends of the member leagues. What an unbelievable deal for our City, and our City leaders are now looking to throw it away.

• Can’t the leagues just cover the shortfall by raising registration fees?

  • Yes, they can. And that’s the plan for 2020, absent an unexpected reversal of the City’s recalcitrant position on funding, but that doesn’t make it right. From our perspective, it is the City’s job to provide fields and green space for our children to play outside. Other than school recess time, organized youth sports are the #1 way that children get exercise in our modern culture, and that’s especially true in our community, where there are no vacant sandlots for pickup games, and where we have essentially built out all residential backyard space for extra square footage for our houses (which of course increases property values and property tax revenues—funny how that works). The challenge of getting our kids off their screens and outside to play and socialize with other kids is very real for every West U parent.

  • Fitness, wellness, and quality of life are supposed to be the core governing values of any municipal parks and recreation department. The Tri-Sports member leagues are already, through their registration and fundraising efforts, covering all the costs of the operation of the leagues themselves and half the costs of operating and maintaining the Tri-Sports fields, which is precisely the footprint needed to run programs for the benefit of the West U and Southside Place residents that play in them. Tri-Sports is already privately funding and administering much of these public responsibilities. To our City leaders, we say, “Do your job.” You are not being effective stewards of City resources by pushing more and more public responsibilities off on private fundraising.

• What will happen to Tri-Sports after 2020?

  • Not entirely clear, but the present plan is to disband Tri-Sports if the current de-funding decision is not reversed by the current Council and we are not successful in electing a new Council in March 2021 that will pledge to restore it. The mission of Tri-Sports is to manage the public-private partnership that has built and maintained the fields and facilities on its three campuses. With the public part gone from the public-private partnership, there will be nothing left for Tri-Sports to manage. The leagues will no doubt survive and likely thrive, but they will have no incentive to continue to invest (particularly capital improvements) dollars in facilities that they neither own nor control. This frustrating process this year has already significantly eroded the trust built up in the Tri-Sports relationship over the course of four decades. So as the current Tri-Sports fields and facilities age, you can expect the leagues to shift their activities more and more to the campuses that they own and control, and perhaps to develop new field complexes entirely, similar to the models they have so successfully executed at McGovern and South Campus. Either that, or the City and/or HISD will have to invest significantly in improvements in order to incentivize the leagues to stay in West U. Those are just the economic realities.

• What about the Legislature’s new cap on local government spending?

  • Not a material issue for purposes of this decision. Total City spending is more than $40,000,000 per year. Total Tri-Sports funding last year, including both cash and non-cash components, was .387% of that budget. Senate Bill 2, enacted in this year’s Texas legislative session, requires cities and municipalities to hold elections if they plan to increase their effective property tax rates for maintenance and operations (M&O) revenues by more than an average of 3.5% annually over a three-year period. About half of our City’s overall revenues, and about 60% of our City’s general fund revenues, are raised through property taxes. From 2018 to 2019, the City’s budgeted increase in the effective M&O property tax rate was less than 1%. For 2020, the increase is currently budgeted at 2.64%. The average increase for the last three budget cycles is 3.27%. The new legislative revenue cap, which does not even take effect until the next budget process (for calendar year 2021), was not a factor in this decision. Or at least it was not a legitimate factor. One current Council member has in fact admitted as much in recent meetings with concerned West U residents.

• So how did the City get this so wrong?

  • All we know is what we know. A canned email response from the City Manager to residents that have complained about the City’s Tri-Sports de-funding decision lists a series of dates and meetings at which the Tri-Sports issue was purportedly raised or discussed. The problem with that is that no one from the City bothered to consult with or speak with Tri-Sports representatives about this until the decision was already made. During its early sessions and workshops, the City was dealing with fundamentally bad data, due to frankly incompetent information gathering, that understated West U resident participation in the leagues by 100%, and overstated West U’s “in kind” services value number by nearly 100%. In addition, all four current City Council members are brand new, and have never before been through a City budgeting process. The same is true of the City Manager. Not bad people. Just woefully uninformed and seemingly not particularly interested in learning anything about the true value or history of Tri-Sports in our community.

  • Our City leadership’s complete lack of awareness or familiarity with the Tri-Sports story was on full display in the two public workshops to which Tri-Sports representatives were invited. Instead of an appreciation for the work that Tri-Sports has done on behalf of our City, Council members lectured on technical issues with the Tri-Sports tax returns, and proclaimed wild conspiracy theories about the City’s 40-year relationship with Tri-Sports being illegal. At one point in the second Tri-Sports workshop, which was purportedly scheduled to gather better information, which the City had completely botched in preparation for its first workshop, one Council member turned to another to ask “Why are we meeting? I thought we already decided this.”

  • It should come as no surprise that respected former West U Mayors Bob Kelly, Bob Fry, and Susan Sample have all publicly expressed their disagreement with this decision and their disappointment with the way that the current Mayor and City Council have approached it.

• So how did people with little appreciation for the importance of children’s sports programs in our City get elected?

  • Well, unfortunately, that’s in some sense our doing. And we’re talking about West U residents, collectively. The current Council and Mayor ran unopposed. Several had to be talked into running. And what about their public mandate, in the Mayor’s words, to “change the way that the City looks at its budget”? The top vote-getter in the March 2019 elections was Kevin Trautner, who received 249 votes. Not a typo. That’s 2.4% of West U’s 10,262 registered voters. The Mayor and all other Council members received even fewer than that. Again, nothing but respect and admiration for their willingness to serve. But our City Council is inexperienced and ill-informed on the Tri-Sports issue. And neither the Mayor nor City Manager has provided wise context or direction.

• Well, let’s get this fixed. What can I do to help?

  • It’s time for all of us to step up and speak up for the interests and values that we share. The voices of Tri-Sports officers and league presidents are being discounted by City leadership as the railings of a few crazy sports parents. The truth is that many of us no longer even have children in the leagues. We just know how important these programs were to our children, and how important those games on Wallin and the Scout House fields are to our community.

  • If you share these views, please sign the online petition available on this site, stating that “I am a West U resident and a registered voter, and I support the immediate restoration of Tri-Sports funding.” In addition, let your friends and neighbors know about this issue. Talk about it at your church, and at dinner parties, and at school gatherings, and at the ballpark. Send people to this website for more information, and contact us with more questions. Lastly, make your views known to our City leadership. Register your disagreement with their decision to eliminate Tri-Sports funding. And let’s get active in our local politics next time around. We need to make sure that we are electing persons to City leadership with proven experience and understanding of the issues that are important to our citizenry. Expect no quick turnaround on this issue. We will need to stay vigilant and stay involved. But together, we can do this. Let’s keep the lights on so our kids can play.