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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]To the points made earlier regarding why taxpayers should care, these clubs are all subsidized. Arlington Soccer pays next to nothing for prime access to turf and grass fields. These are constructed and maintained through tax dollars. They in fact, could not operate without these fields. Furthermore, they reserve huge amounts of space that then isn't available to the public. Now, you can make the argument that this is a good use of public space and I wouldn't disagree. In the end though, and this goes for all these clubs, they're basically an unregulated Parks and Rec extension. The Arlington salaries may not be the most egregious in the area, but if they were a part of the government, they wouldn't be anywhere near where they are.
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It's definitely true that the clubs need field space to survive.  But it's also true that those fields may not exist but for the clubs.  I think of it as a public/private partnership.  I can't speak to Arlington, specifically, but I'm familiar with two jurisdictions where some of the fields wouldn't exist, or wouldn't be maintained, without the clubs advocating for them.  The larger clubs can point to their large membership and community benefits to convince municipalities that sports fields and lights are high value community amenities.  Also, they provide a service they are ideally suited to execute.  These same municipalities all have their own recreational departments, but I'd venture to say that they aren't as successful at attracting participants or using the facilities at their highest value.  [/quote]

These clubs definitely play a big role in advocacy for these fields aka making sure the public says it's okay to spend the money. They don't spend big chunks of cash to help it though. And I agree that it's a net public good to have these spaces. But to say that these municipalities couldn't handle these programs internally is just a myth at best. These clubs are all bloated with "directors" that have no experience off the field and are thrown in admin roles. They heavily rely on volunteer work, which is crazy when you think you're paying upwards of 5k to have a kid on a team. I'm not saying municipalities are perfect, but it's at least got some oversight. At the very least, on the rec side, Arlington already runs youth basketball internally. Couldn't they run rec soccer? They have the fields and it's 100% volunteer coaches. Why is Arlington Soccer needed as a middle man? As for Travel, maybe it gets more interesting to try to make happen. That said, they do it with swimming and gymnastics, 2 programs that are completely filled up every year.[/quote]

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