Daleville council reviews rental fees

Whether fees charged for rental of the city’s recreational ball fields should be changed was the topic of discussion at a Daleville City Council work session March 15.

At the voting meeting the following day, the Daleville City Council decided to postpone a vote on the issue until Daleville Recreation Director Tina Cannon provided more detailed information to the council.

“A couple of years ago we set rental agreements for use of the Culpepper Park ball fields,” explained Daleville Mayor Jayme Stayton. “We haven’t had much success in attracting tournaments to the city and there have been some complaints that our city’s rental fees are higher than those in the surrounding areas.

“We want to revisit our fees to make them more competitive,” he added.

Cannon told the council that her research revealed that the Enterprise Parks and Recreation Department charges $125 per field, Elba charges $100 per field and Dothan charges $135 per field. Dothan has a $250 deposit and it is required that the person rent all fields at that particular complex.

Daleville currently charges $200 to rent each of the ball fields at Culpepper Park, Cannon said.

“My point in bringing this up is that I’m out there walking and I’ve just seen those fields sitting empty,” said Councilman Alan Souders. “I’m not trying to compare us with Dothan but I work in Dothan and I see them having tournaments constantly and bringing people to their city.

“Whatever we can do we should do,” he said. “Something is better than nothing. If we were just a little bit under some of these cities, maybe we could draw people into the city of Daleville.

“That’s the goal, that’s why we put the money into the ball fields. I would just like to be able to attract tournaments,” Sounders said. “Lowering the rental price, advertising better, whatever it takes to attract as much here as much as we can to support Daleville businesses.”

Cannon said that if the council lowers the $200 rental fee, they need to consider imposing a deposit fee requirement. “Because sometimes people call to rent the field and then they back out and (the staff) has already chalked the fields,” she said.

“We just need to cover our costs,” Souders said. “We have events (at the city’s parks and recreational fields) to help our businesses.

“We can put the word out that Daleville is open for business,” he added. “If we had a more competitive price maybe people would choose Daleville to come play ball.

“We added the two ball fields because we were told one of the reasons that we didn’t get tournaments like this is because we didn’t have more ball fields and now we have four,” Souders said.

Souders asked Cannon to research the feasibility of bringing mobile Frisbee golf and kickball to the city.

At the voting meeting March 16, Stayton asked that the council table the rental fee issue until Cannon can obtain more details.

The next meeting of the Daleville City Council is Tuesday, April 6, at 5:30 p.m. in the Daleville City Hall Council Chambers. The meeting is open to the public.