City, School District May Form Joint Task Force to Look at Playing Fields

Amongst a long list of hot topics, the Los Altos City Council's schools subcommittee meeting made plans this week to form a task force that would manage the playing fields used by both schools and outside organizations, such as youth sports clubs.

The subcommittee met Wednesday night to discuss issues that affect both the city and the , including traffic, webcasting, playing fields and other upcoming projects.

"We believe that the problem of allocating field space should be viewed as a community-wide problem and not left to each field owner [city, school district] to deal with separately," read a proposal to the subcommittee submitted by Randall Kenyon, assistant superintendent of business services, and Beverly Tucker, city recreation director.

The proposal continued, "We think there are various options to improve the situation, including the following — building new fields, re-purposing some facilities to meet specific sport needs, centralizing and/or consolidating reservation systems, and/or changing priority ranking systems."

Two entities — the school board and the city council — will individually discuss tsk force formation individually before any action is taken. One suggestion for task membership included the city's recreation director, the school district business manager, representatives from seven sports organizations, a school board representative and a council representative.

Subcommittee members also talked about the possibility of webcasting school board meetings. According to city staff, one-time start-up costs for webcasting — using the same structure the city council uses — would be $243,828, with ongoing costs of $151,186 per year.

"What we should take away from this is the City has funds for the hardware and we’re willing to help if the district wants it," Mayor Ron Packard said. "We just wanted to share with our costs for the hardware and you can think it over," he told the district's subcommittee members.

Another hot topic renewed past concerns about traffic problems at the junior high schools. School board clerk Doug Smith raised questions about the high level of traffic at and suggested that a city easement on the campus be opened up.

There is a city easement that could "potentially provide access to the back of Egan," Smith said.

"I think the advantage you have here is you’re not trying to change a behavior, you’re trying to add a positive one," Smith said. He added  that this could be beneficial for parents dropping off students and for pedestrians and bicyclists going to the school.

Packard said if the district provides the City with an analysis of pedestrians and others who would use the easement and any other necessary data, he would recommend it to the council. Two coucil members are needed to recommend an item, and the council's David Casas said he add his recommendation as well if he sees appropriate data.

The subcommittee moved on to issues near , where there are stopping and parking restrictions along . No recommendations came out of that discussion, though.

Other items discussed at the meeting were the San Antonio Center project and its effects and the crossing guard program. Click on the PDF above for agenda details.