Tauranga City Council scales back sports field fees after concerns from clubs

Sports clubs will pay a fee for senior teams to train on fields from 2025. Photo / John Borren, SunLive

Fees for using Tauranga sports fields have been scaled back after clubs raised fears costs would prevent people playing.

Tauranga City Council was proposing to charge adult teams fees for matches and training as part of the draft 2024-34 long-term plan (LTP).

At a meeting on Monday, the council removed the match fees and pushed back the date training fees would be paid until the 2025 winter sports season.

The fee structure is based on a single week of training time. The council would charge $258 per hour, per field/wicket, per week for adult teams.

This would form the total fee for the season, rather than being charged every week.

From July 2025, the proposed fee would have increased to also charge $258 for each game or match, but this has been ditched.

Dozens of sports clubs spoke at the LTP hearings in February, all of them concerned high fees would stop people playing.

Todd Morris, of the Ōtūmoetai Cadets Cricket Club, said during the hearing the new fee was a “cash-grab of low-hanging fruit”.

Charging senior teams would still impact the juniors, he said.

“If you kill the senior clubs, the junior clubs will soon follow.”

Tauranga City AFC chairperson Brendon McHugh said football was a grassroots sport and needed to be affordable.

Higher council fees would need to be offset by increasing the costs for members.

Tauranga City AFC chairperson Brendon McHugh at the long-term plan hearings in February. Photo / Alisha Evans

”This will ultimately cause those who can pay to play.”

At Monday’s meeting, council community services general manager Barbara Dempsey said the fees “didn’t hit the mark” with the community.

Council staff had worked with sports clubs and Dempsey said they acknowledged they needed to pay something towards maintaining fields.

”Where we’ve landed is probably reasonably fair.”

The council spends $2.5 million on maintaining sports fields and would get around $115,000 in annual revenue from the training fees by 2027.

With the match fees, it would have been $230,000.

Tauranga City Council community services general manager Barbara Dempsey. Photo / Alex Cairns

The new fee structure would also provide a 50 per cent discount for “emerging sports” that have fewer than 100 participants, established for less than five years, and where more than 10 per cent of participants were from low socio-economic backgrounds.

A season is based on being three months or longer, with fees for half a field or a smaller season worked out proportionally.

Council strategic planning and partnerships, spaces and places manager Ross Hudson said the match fees would have had the largest impact on sports clubs.

”That really tipped the balance around affordability.

”Where we’ve landed represents a balance between affordability and therefore participation.”

Hudson said staff would continue to work with sports clubs to look at the effects of the fees and make changes if needed.

Tauranga City Council commission chairwoman Anne Tolley. Photo / John Borren, SunLive

Commission chair Anne Tolley said they had to be fair to all sports users and the field fees were recognition that indoor sports paid “a fair whack” in indoor court fees.

”It isn’t really about the revenue because as we’ve seen it doesn’t actually make a dent in the costs. But it’s about accepting that everyone has to pay a bit towards it, and every little bit helps.

”Ratepayers picked up the rest of the costs for maintaining the fields, but this was recognition of the “public good” that sports did, Tolley said.

Commissioner Bill Wasley said the fields were also green spaces that contributed to the amenity of the city which you couldn’t always put a dollar value on.

The 2024-34 long-term plan will be adopted at a meeting on April 22.

- LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.