I wasn’t happy to hear that Plant City Little League turnout dropped again this year. I wasn’t too surprised, either, given my past coverage of national participation rates.
Still, it’s not good to see what was once America’s pastime slipping.
The last time I covered Little League declines, earlier this year, I posed several theories as to why this could be happening on a large scale. With last week’s story in mind, I can at least say that I think I’ve figured out what the problem is on a local level: money.
When I talked to PCLL president Ben Smith, he told me that the league was losing players to programs as far away as south Lakeland because it was simply cheaper to play there. And that’s true: you can sign your daughter up for Christina Girls Softball in the spring, according to their website, for as low as $50 and as much as $100 — and that’s before discounts, which can apply to families with multiple children or those that have registered early enough.
You can also go to Antioch and play Little League for $60.
All told, you can put one kid in Christina and one kid in Antioch for almost the same cost as putting one kid through PCLL — a $165 total fee, with the mandatory city fee of $30 already applied.
I can see why Smith is eager to try and get the city fee, which was mandated in 2007, abolished. That money can take a lot of families out of consideration for putting their children in many youth sports leagues, even if $30 seems like no big deal to some. It’s not a popular fee, based on what I’ve heard around town, and this is also not the first time a sports league has appealed it.
Of course, there’s another side to the argument: what if the city fee isn’t the biggest problem?
I’ve been to a lot of parks around Hillsborough County, covering baseball and football, and I can say I have yet to come across fields that are maintained as well as those inside our city limits. Perhaps that’s what happens when you’re charging $30 per head among PCLL, the Plant City Dolphins and pretty much anything within city limits that isn’t school-affiliated. No one can say that that money isn’t being put to good use.
PCLL charges $135 per head before you even get to the city fees. While this league does field more teams than anything else in the area during a good year, and while it does have to put kids on the road in both the regular season and All-Stars play, it would seem that this is the number that will have to take the biggest hit to draw more sign-ups.
Of course, you don’t want to cut the costs so much that it becomes impossible for PCLL to stay in the black while covering its own operations.
I think I have a solution: both sides should come down a bit. That means bringing the PCLL base fee down to two figures, and knocking no more than $10 off of the $30 city fee.
I’ll admit that, because I don’t have the books for both PCLL and the City of Plant City, I’m ballparking these numbers. This obviously means that PCLL would need more registrations to earn the same amount of money, but the goal here isn’t just to add a few more kids to break even: it’s about getting the numbers back up like they were when the league was at its peak.
It would still be the most expensive program in the area, but why not shoot for a $90 league fee and try to knock the city fee down to at least $25? $115 is certainly more accessible than $165.
Contact Justin Kline at jkline@plantcityobserver.com.