Mt. Lebanon youth sports backers catch up on bills
An umbrella group for youth sports teams in Mt. Lebanon is catching up on back payments to the school district and municipality for maintaining athletic fields, but critics say the group should be excluded from talks about expansion of Mt. Lebanon's parks and fields.
For more than a decade, the Mt. Lebanon Youth Sports Alliance has participated in a joint maintenance agreement with the schools and the municipality for their athletic fields: The YSA pays the district $30,000 a year, and the district does routine maintenance, including some lawn mowing and dragging infield dirt. The schools pay $83,000 a year to the municipality, and the municipality performs bigger projects, such as yearly grading and turf maintenance.
IRS records that resident Bill Lewis presented to commissioners last week indicated that the YSA had fallen behind on its payments between fiscal years 2004 and 2010, the most recent year for which the nonprofit's IRS Form 990 filings are available. But school officials said their records show the back payments had been made after the filings or had been dismissed by the district.
The forms show that the YSA paid the district $10,000 in 2010, $3,597 in 2008 and $26,000 in 2005 -- about $50,000 short of what it owed. But district Finance Manager Jan Klein said the forms don't reflect that YSA members did $4,000 worth of work in 2005 to the fields. Then-school Superintendent John Allison dismissed the amount owed in 2008 because of the group's insufficient funds; and the organization paid the $20,000 balance for 2010 last year.
"The payments weren't always made on exactly the dates in the agreements... but our records are very clear," Klein said. "We've confirmed every one of the payments in their records, and we're completely in agreement."
For 2011, which hasn't shown up yet in the online IRS records, the YSA paid $10,000, and will soon write a check for the other $20,000, Klein said. The payment for 2012 will depend on renegotiation of the agreement. In all, the only outstanding payment is $20,000 for last year, Klein said.
Lewis urged the commission not to continue the Joint Maintenance Agreement.
The municipality has been weighing whether to build more athletic fields or improve some existing ones with new drainage or artificial turf, and the YSA is working on some proposals of its own, said commission President Dave Brumfield. Meanwhile, the agreement is being renegotiated to reflect that teams have two fewer fields to use because of construction at the high school.
Brumfield said the issue never affected the municipality, since the school district made its payments in full to the municipality each year.
"We get a check from the school district; we don't get a check from the school district and the YSA," he said. "You're talking about volunteer organizations without financial backing. You have to understand that if they break their contract, it's not like you can sue them."
Brumfield said he'd prefer to see the agreement restructured to hold individual sports groups accountable if they don't make their share of the YSA's payments.
