In a quid pro quo move for the city of Santa Maria and Allan Hancock College, city officials have agreed to contribute $250,000 in Recreation and Parks Department funding for the construction of new athletics facilities—in exchange for public access to them.
On Nov. 15, the Santa Maria City Council approved the joint-use agreement, which will provide the college with the sum in annual increments of $62,500 over the next four years.
The money will be used to construct a new running track, two soccer fields, and a practice football field.
Under the agreement, the city’s Recreation and Parks Commission is authorized to review and finalize the deal.
The college is currently building athletics facilities at its Santa Maria campus with proceeds from Measure I funding. But due to low construction bids for the bond-approved projects, college officials sought to find other projects, according to a city staff report. The college board decided to proceed with building facilities deemed more critical using the bond money, while simultaneously seeking other funding partnerships.
Felix Hernandez, Allan Hancock College’s vice president of facilities and operations, briefed the Recreation and Parks Commission on the construction project in May 2011.
Support for the agreement came from Recreation and Parks Director Alex Posada, who recommended to the council that the city back the facility construction, and cited a 2006 needs-assessment study which stated the city was in need of more public access fields and tracks, facilities that had been decreasing in recent years.
The city first entered into a joint-use agreement with the college in the 1960s, but since then, few updates have been made to that agreement. City staffers agree that the most current version of the agreement “falls short of meeting the city’s needs in providing recreational opportunities at college-owned facilities and access to college-owned equipment,” according to the report.
The city has a total of $1.5 million available in Recreation and Parks development funds, and, according to city staff, no pending park projects will be affected by the city’s contribution to the college.
This article appears in Nov 23-30, 2011.