Ernie Shaw, recreation superintendent at the Lawrence Parks and Recreation Department, talks with great pride about how the most recent catalog of summer classes and events grew by four pages from a year ago.

It’s a clear sign of the growth in popularity and offerings of the department. Unfortunately for Shaw, adding pages to the catalog is the simple part. Adding space to hold more classes and new programs – everything from new kickball leagues to dodgeball teams – is more difficult. But Shaw says building new facilities, whether it be outdoor ballfields or indoor gym space, has become critical.

“Big open space is a big problem,” Shaw said. “We quite honestly are at the point that we can’t do more with what we have. At some point we’re going to have to start turning people away.”

For some city commissioners, that might be better than the alternative of adding to the city budget to allow the department to continue its growth.

“At some point, instead of adding pages to the summer recreation guide, we might have to talk about keeping it the same size or reducing the number of pages,” said City Commissioner David Schauner. “What I’m saying is that we can’t let the recreation program wag a bigger dog.”

Searching for space

That’s not the direction that Jeff Allen would like to see the city move. Allen already struggles to find a space for his two sons’ baseball teams to practice on a regular basis. Usually, he said, the teams end up skipping practice. Other coaches, he said, will sometimes take off work to hold practices during the day, or hold practices late into the evening.

“I know that early in the season, we would have kids on school nights practicing until 8:30, and I didn’t appreciate that,” Allen said. “I think the way things are going, the city is going to have to do something. Right now the kids are being caught in a pinch.”

Cardinals players listen to their coaches Jeff Allen, left, and Kenneth Click before they take the field Thursday at Holcom Sports Complex. Allen and Click would like to see more practice fields available for Little League players to practice on.

Lee Ice, the city’s youth sports director, says the shortage is not surprising given the city’s population growth and the number of facilities the city has.

Ice said the city’s youth baseball and softball leagues had approximately 100 teams that share seven practice fields. He said the last time the city built a new youth baseball facility was in 1973 with the construction of the fields at Holcom Park, although the city entered into a partnership with the not-for-profit Youth Sports Inc. to build new baseball fields at YSI, near the intersection of Clinton Parkway and Wakarusa Drive, in the mid-1990s.

Ice said city officials usually could find a way to make it all work without turning away youths who want to play, but he’s confident it won’t always be that way.

“We always seem to fix things to make it work, but then nobody ever sees the need,” Ice said. “But at some point we’re not going to be able to fix it. We’re going to have to start to turn kids away. Hopefully, we’ll be able to see that before it actually happens.”

City sales tax projects completed since 1994

Lawrence fields can’t keep up with players (6-16-04)

Shaw said the space shortage was becoming particularly acute for indoor facilities. During the 30 years that he’s been with the department, the city has undertaken just two major indoor recreation projects. The city built the Holcom Recreation Center, 2700 W. 27th St., in the late 1980s and expanded the East Lawrence Center, 1245 E. 15th St., in the mid-1990s.

“The town has grown a lot more than that during that time,” Shaw said.

The shortage is beginning to catch up with the department in some visible ways. The department likely will have to cut a portion of its gymnastics program because it is losing the use of gym space at Kansas University’s Robinson Gymnasium. The department is able to move 250 youth students that are part of its noncompetitive program into a small gymnasium at the East Lawrence Center. But Shaw doesn’t have a plan for the 25 students who are part of the competitive Kansas School of Gymnastics.

The move of the noncompetitive classes to East Lawrence also means that portions of that facility won’t be open to basketball or volleyball because it is not feasible to remove the gymnastics equipment after each class.

Decision looming

It would be hard to say that parks and recreation needs have been forgotten in the community. Since a countywide 1 cent sales tax was approved in 1994, the department has undertaken nearly $28 million worth of projects – including new indoor and outdoor aquatic centers and an adult softball complex, the Clinton Lake Softball Complex near the South Lawrence Trafficway and Wakarusa Drive.

As part of the 2006 budget process, which is currently under way, commissioners are hearing that the money needs to keep flowing. The city in the next two years is set to pay off $6.5 million in debt related to the outdoor aquatic center, 727 Ky., the East Lawrence Center expansion and the Clinton Lake Softball Complex.

City staff members have proposed using the $6.5 million in debt capacity to fund future parks and recreation projects that could include new practice fields near Clinton Lake, a new multipurpose indoor gymnasium facility at an undetermined location and a multitude of parkland improvements and acquisitions.

Not all commissioners are sure about the proposal, though.

“Parks and recreation is an incredibly popular program in this community and they do a great job, but the question I’m struggling with is finding a balance between what they want and what we can afford,” Schauner said.

Parks and recreation projects will face stiff competition from other city departments. City commissioners have said increasing maintenance of the city’s roads is a high priority; the police department has asked for significant new funding for technology to track crime data that a recent report found lacking; and bioscience supporters are seeking $345,000 to grow the industry in the community. And commissioners have said they would like to meet all the city’s needs without raising taxes.

“We could spend some of that same (parks and recreation) money on other good ideas,” Schauner said. “There is a million dollars’ worth of good ideas and I can tell you that there is not a million dollars to fund them.”

But some city commissioners said they were concerned about the prospect of parks and recreation having to slow its growth of programs and other offerings.

“I think the beauty of our parks and recreation department has been that it has constantly been adapting to the needs of the community,” said City Commissioner Sue Hack. “If the department sees a need for aerobics, then ‘boom,’ we have aerobics. I would hate to see them lose that ability.”