Baseball teams are paying as much as 100 percent more to rent diamonds across the county this season, a change that has already contributed to reduced use at one field and could lead to more cutbacks.
The biggest increase comes at Gene Lobe Field No. 1 at the Kitsap County Fairgrounds, home to the Kitsap BlueJackets, where rates jumped from $15 to $40 an hour for the field and $10 to $22 an hour for lights on the first of the year. On Bainbridge Island, the noncommercial rates at fields like Battle Point Park are climbing to $22 an hour, up from $12. The commercial rate is now $44, up from $24.
Ryan Parker, coach of the Olympic College baseball team, says the steep rate increase at the fairgrounds was a big part of why the team is moving from the fairgrounds to Bremerton’s Knights Field (formerly Legion Field) this season. Matt Acker, owner of the Bluejackets, said he will consider alternatives for his team, but is definitely going to have to reduce the tournaments and youth camps that he’s been hosting at the fairgrounds.
“Eventually they’re going to end up with a bunch of fields sitting there empty,” Parker says. “And that’s sad.”
Julie Donegan, co-founder of a Bainbridge-based select baseball club called the Mavericks, said the organization set the rates it charges players’ families for the year back in August. “We just got all of these rate increases in the last month,” she says, “so it’s made it kind of difficult to work within our budget.”
She says the rate increase, coupled with significant raises in registration fees at a number of tournaments, may lead to a shorter season this year and higher participation fees next year.
Kitsap County and Bainbridge officials noted that this is the first rate increase in a number of years and that use of the facilities is still heavily subsidized. Jim Dunwiddie, director of the Kitsap County Parks Department, said that rate increases were the result of a request by the county commissioners to raise revenue, and says they are comparable with fees charged in places like Pierce County.
But the comparison is not a perfect one. Fields at the Heritage Recreation Center in Puyallup, for example, go for $40 an hour — $50 with lights. And unlike the fields at the fairgrounds, the infields are made of artificial turf, making them playable more months a year in the Northwest’s baseball weather. And regular users of the fairgrounds like to point out that the Regional Athletic Complex in Lacey charges between $27 and $32.50 an hour to play under lights on artificial turf.
“For us to drive an hour for a game at the RAC and play a doubleheader,” Parker says, “it’s cheaper than staying here and using the local fields.”
Mike Reese, coach of West Hills Vipers select baseball teams, which play at the fairgrounds, says that the new rates would be acceptable for improved facilities with artificial turf, but not for what the county is currently serving.
“The product,” he says, “is very, very inferior for what those rates are.”
Parker says that the poor quality of the field is another reason why he moved the team to Knights Field. He cut a deal with Bremerton School District, which runs the field, to put money into improving the park in lieu of rent, an arrangement that’s similar to the one between Bainbridge Parks and Bainbridge Island Little League.
Donegan says that on Bainbridge — which, like the rest of Kitsap, doesn’t have any artificial turf baseball parks — they’re going to be paying almost 100 percent more an hour for facilities that are hit or miss.
“You just never know when you get out there,” she says.
Dunwiddie agrees that there’s work to be done on the parks at the fairgrounds, and he’d like to install an artificial turf infield. But he said that there hasn’t been any money for capital projects of any kind for County parks in recent years.
“I don’t want to sound smart,” he said, “but you need money.”
