Reply to Arlington proposing to close county gymnastics program

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]When you sign your kids up for a county sport or class or summer camp, do you email the county to ask them what portion of their costs are being recovered by the fees you are paying? I'm guessing you don't. That information hasn't been shared with gymnastics parents either. The county sets the fees. We pay the fees they charge. Gymnastics parents haven't been taking advantage of anyone. All of this has been determined by the county and they're the only ones with the information about fee recovery.

After this was proposed, not even a whole week ago, gymnastics parents asked the county to share this information and it still hasn't been shared by the county manager.  We also know that swim doesn't recover its fees, but that information hasn't been provided in any detail either. The only thing we know is that the county is making a payment of 800k towards Long Bridge next year.  It's awfully smug of you to accuse anyone of taking advantage of anything without having more information.[/quote]

You couldn't figure out having nearly an entire facility built out and dedicated to your competitive sport alone and coaches employed by the county was kind of a sweetheart setup?

I'll be honest and say my kid did AAC for a couple years and when I realized the setup and saw the price (it's a lot cheaper than private clubs) I was immediately thinking....wow this is weird.  I thought it was strange the swim coaches had arlington county email addresses.  And I thought it was kind of a racket and said it to people.  So yeah, don't mind if the swim team is being called out and not shocked at all to hear it.[/quote] Honestly, historically the gymnastics program has made money. That's one of the reasons it was expanded in 2017.  It sounds like an only recent years it hasn't been recovering its fees, and there's plenty of demand for the program to cover its own costs. So yeah I never really gave it a thought.  I spent far more time and thought dealing with waitlists just trying to get my kid in anywhere because gymnastics is so oversubscribed.

The prices for private competitive gymnastics programs aren't particularly public. Most require that you reach out and have a conversation with someone and I've never done that. Many of the other programs also aren't apples to apples with Barcroft because they offer more extravagant travel or have fancier uniforms or have more/better coaches or have longer practice hours, etc. It's not that easy to just compare.[/quote]

I can see how the operating yearly budget portion of the gymnastics program could make money.   But the decision from the County to build out a facility to this extent for such a specialized sport and spend millions on it is a baffling decision to me and I would be curious to hear if there was even any debate about that at the time.  Do these types of facilities exist at a local government level in other places?  Maybe this is normal.   As many people have pointed out, a pool is a different investment for the community.[/quote] If the program was covering its own costs and it is historic remnant, does it really matter how it came to be?  [b]It's benefiting the community and is a quality program. [/b] It's apparently been in place for almost 50 years which is far longer than I've been in Arlington resident.

I grew up in a place that had no public pools, no gymnastics, no county summer camps, no nature centers, and was missing a lot of other nice things that Arlington has, but I don't know why that is the right decision over the county sponsoring a program that recovers its costs (or even a program that decides to subsidize some costs, as I could see it making sense for the county to subsidize costs for low income gymnasts or adaptive gymnasts, depending on priorities.). [/quote]

The facility could be re-purposed and benefit a lot more people.  Sounds like before it did serve more people with indoor soccer and basektball.  My kid happens to play indoor soccer at the Gunston bubble and it sucks in there.  It's super cold in the winter and can't be properly heated.   They also have to cut off registration for that recreational league, which is popular.  I'm guessing because the only place to play is Gunston bubble.

I'm not a fan of it's been this way for 50 years so it should stay that way though.[/quote]
There are already tons of county ready sources dedicated to soccer. Tons and tons of fields. There's no reason I need to take a single facility from gymnasts.[/quote]

We do have a lot of private and public soccer fields. That isnt the case with gymnastics. Also fields are mostly empty during the day whereas barcroft is full open to close serving nearly 1000 kids per session.

Not including summer camp![/quote]

I realize not everyone knows this but futsal, soccer, and indoor soccer are actually all different.  Not interchangeable.  Different rules, different goal sizes, different field sizes.  Different.[/quote]

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