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Santa Clara wants to make it easier for low-income youths to play sports by paying their fees.
The Santa Clara City Council voted unanimously Tuesday, with Councilmember Raj Chahal absent, to make the Wade Brummal Scholarship program easier to access and more streamlined. The program helps low-income families pay sports-related fees.
Changes include a streamlined application process for youth sports groups, turning the paper form into an electronic submission, as well as more clear guidelines on the scholarship’s uses. Councilmembers also amended the fee application approval process to allow city employees to approve requests up to $2,500. Anything above that amount needs approval from the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission.
“My goal is that any kid that wants to play should be able to play, but the kid whose parents can pay, they should be paying a reasonable amount,” Councilmember Suds Jain said during the meeting. “That’s my philosophy about this.”
The city established the scholarship in 2015 and imposes a $25 fee on non-Santa Clara residents participating in local sports groups to provide scholarships for residents who can’t afford it. The scholarship has about $235,000 in its fund, according to the city.
Mike Walke, executive board president of the Police Activities League, said the changes make the scholarship program easier to access.
“I’m in favor of the final result, it has clear guidelines and procedures that everybody can follow,” Walke told San José Spotlight.
Walke and dozens of representatives from other nonprofit youth sports groups met with the city’s parks and recreation department multiple times over the course of about a year to discuss the field fees and scholarship program. Walke said while discussions were tense at times, there were efforts on both sides to understand each other’s concerns and come to a solution for everyone.
Parks and Recreation Commissioner Vikas Gupta said the program has been underutilized by the city’s nonprofit youth sports groups because of the cumbersome application process and general lack of awareness.
“It’s kind of hard to project how it’s going to play out,” Gupta told San José Spotlight. “When (nonprofits) have disadvantaged youth in their membership, hopefully they will be able to relay that information to them and share that they in fact are able to support them through the scholarship.”
He said the city has a history of prioritizing services to residents, including supporting youth sports, but it can’t subsidize the programs fully, so compromises were made.
Last year, the city began charging a $14 per hour fee to use fields. Multiple nonprofit youth sports groups, including the Police Activities League, spoke out against the fees, claiming it was a large financial burden, especially on low-income families who might not be able to afford the increase.
Improving the scholarship is one way the city can ease the burden for low-income families whose children want to play sports. The other is adjusting the field fees, which was approved by parks commissioners Monday.
The proposal includes lowering the amount nonprofit youth sports groups are charged from $14 an hour to $8 an hour. Walke said he would’ve preferred to not have to pay for fields, as the youth sports groups did before 2024, but added the lower amount is more manageable.
“Zero amount would be wonderful but that’s not ever gonna come back, so being realistic,” Walke told San José Spotlight. “Times are changing, so does everything around you.”
The city council will review the proposed field booking fee updates at a meeting in April.
Contact B. Sakura Cannestra at [email protected] or @SakuCannestra on X.
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