Reply to DCPS students shafted again - sign petition to keep Jelleff field public

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No dog in this fight, but I’ve coached baseball in many different schools in DC. Jelleff was owned by the boys and girls club, the city bought the building and field in '08 or '09.  There city didn't begin maintaining the building until then.  The field was built, turfed, and maintained by Maret during the fall/spring according to the lease since then.  The reason it's a 10-year lease is that 10 years is the lifecycle of the turf on the field.  Maret uses the field until 6pm (unless there is a game being played, and Maret has earlier game start times than other teams in the league) Monday-Friday, 3 or 4 Saturdays a season.  The British School uses the field during the weekdays until 330 pm on weekdays when the field is generally unused.  The reason for this setup is to accommodate as many groups as possible including Stoddard, and Break-Out Lacrosse.

Furthermore, as someone who has extensive history with DPR's inability to maintain outdoor athletic facilities I know the city won't actually maintain the field space.  I've spent countless hours prepping and maintaining public baseball fields like Banneker/Maury Wills, Ft. Reno, Friendship, Guy Mason, Hamilton (before it was turf) and Taft field.  Every time the city loses one of it's public/private partnerships the facilities, and the children that year them, suffer.  A recent and local example is the conditions that have deteriorated at Guy Mason since Georgetown Softball left.[/quote]

DPR used to do a lot of public-private partnerships, and they were great -- for the private part. The problem was they consistently undervalued their assets,  nobody was looking out for the public interest. The Maret deal is a relic of that era, DPR has almost entirely stopped doing those kinds of deals but I guess Maret is an exception.

The only partnerships that DPR does now are programmatic partnerships, where they work with outside groups to provide programming.  [/quote]

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