The Redwood Empire Baseball League in Santa Rosa, Calif., may be cutting ties with Santa Rosa City Schools now that the district is requiring the adult league to pay thousands to use baseball fields across three high school campuses.
As reported by The Press Democrat of Santa Rosa, Redwood Empire Baseball League president Rick Cantor applied in early March for the annual permit required for the adult baseball teams to play games at Piner, Santa Rosa and Elsie Allen high school fields, as they have for 22 years. However, his permit was denied for Santa Rosa’s campus in May due to what he said administrators told him was a new policy barring portable toilets from school grounds.
Cantor was told his league would now be required to pay about $1,200 to use on-site bathroom facilities — a fee too steep for the community organization to afford, according to Adriana Gutierrez of The Press Democrat.
"After Cantor was denied at the Santa Rosa campus, the two other schools also withheld permits and required the league to pay more, bringing the cost up to $3,600 for all three schools," Gutierrez wrote. "The fees associated with facility usage are to pay custodians to unlock bathroom facilities and remain on campus until all games are over."
“We have a budget for our field use and that would completely blow up our budget,” Cantor said, as reported by The Press Democrat. “It’s ludicrous.”
At least two youth sports organizations — the Atletico Santa Rosa Fútbol Club and Santa Rosa Youth Soccer — say they, too, are battling with the proposed cost increases to lease school fields.
Santa Rosa City Schools spokesperson Patrick Gannon said the district has never allowed portable toilets on campus and that any previous instances where portable toilets were brought onto campus was done so without permission.
“I’m not aware of any public entity that would allow an organization to bring a toilet onto a field,” Gannon said.
The district has many portable restrooms in active use across its elementary and secondary campuses.
District board policy 1330, which outlines the use of school facilities, does not specifically prohibit facility usage if the organization requests to bring a portable toilet onto campus.
The policy does state that “the district may exclude certain school facilities from non-school use for safety or security reasons.”
“I think bringing a porta potty onto a common area that students use regularly would raise pretty significant health and safety concerns,” Gannon said.
Cantor said the Redwood Empire Baseball League has paid the district about $106,000 in total for its annual leases to use the school fields over the past 22 years. That money is funneled into district funds used for capital maintenance, repair, restoration and refurbishment of school facilities and grounds, according to board policy.
The league has also donated $82,000 to the high school’s baseball programs in the same span of time, Cantor said. That money could be used to maintain fields, buy uniforms, baseball equipment and any other needs of the program.
Per Gutierrez, members of the league — who are 25 years old at the youngest, and others who play on teams with 72-year-olds and those older — also donate their time to maintain the fields during the seasons they are leasing them out. Members of the league are often parents and grandparents of Santa Rosa City Schools or are current and former employees of the district.
“We have developed these wonderful relationships with these local high school baseball programs and through our money and our volunteers,” Cantor said, according to The Press Democrat. “It’s in our best interest — we want to have good fields for us to play on and we also want our children to have good fields to play on.”
