Friday, February 16, 2018
Since Sept 27, 1879
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Field fees open can of worms BY SUE NEWMAN
SUE.N@THEGUARDIAN.CO.NZ
IN TODAY’S GUARDIAN
THE INDEPENDENT VOICE OF MID CANTERBURY
Sports clubs around the Ashburton District are bracing themselves for a new raft of charges as sportsfield fees are reshaped and maintenance conditions rewritten. The Ashburton District Council is about to sign off its revised sports field and domain useage policy and this will see some clubs, for the first time, paying fees to use sports grounds. For Mid Canterbury Football, any increase in ground fees is too much, said spokesman Roger Dakers. The club already pays a hefty fee to
use the Walnut Avenue Pavilion, but Dakers was unclear whether this included ground fees or not. “This is pretty tough when you’re a non-profit club thats focus is on keeping young people playing sport,” he said. Football uses all of the west end of the domain playing fields during the season as well as part of Argyle Park for training. The new fee schedule could see the organisation pay at least $600 extra per season for the two sets of fields. “We’d have to add the fees to our subs and most people already grumble
they’re too high. We try to avoid putting these up because we want to keep kids playing sport,” he said. At Argyle Park, Mid Canterbury Football had already paid a significant amount towards a new pavilion and has recently spent $10,000 upgrading field lights. Dakers is also questioning how the fees will work when other people turn up and use grounds that were being paid for by another sporting code.
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