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Youth sports leader tells board PenMet field‑use deal disadvantages some Peninsula residents
Summary
A Peninsula Youth Sports Coalition representative told the board the district’s facility‑use agreement with PenMet gives PenMet priority access while some district residents face exclusions or surcharges when registering for PenMet programs.
Michael Perot, speaking for the Peninsula Youth Sports Coalition, urged the board to require equal treatment of Peninsula School District residents under the district’s facility‑use agreement with PenMet Parks.
Perot said the agreement grants both parties free access and priority use of each other’s facilities when not used by the owner. He said PenMet basketball programs currently use 10 school gyms while the district uses PenMet synthetic turf fields for baseball and soccer. “On the surface, this sounds like a success, but, unfortunately, the reality is a little more complicated,” Perot said.
Perot told the board that PenMet’s registration policy imposes an out‑of‑district surcharge and excludes some families who live within the school district but outside PenMet’s smaller service boundary. “Kids living in the school district, but outside PenMet’s smaller boundary, are often excluded from programs or penalized simply because of where they live,” he said, and asked the district to notify PenMet that “moving forward, all Peninsula School District residents, including those from the Key Peninsula and the city of Gig Harbor, must be treated equally in their programs if they expect to receive priority use of district facilities at no cost.”
Perot said the district uses PenMet fields because some district fields “don’t meet the standards required by its own programs,” and that the district has not upgraded its own fields. He characterized the arrangement as unfair when the district provides free access but PenMet applies differential registration rules to residents within the district.
Board and staff did not take an immediate vote on the request during public comment; the speaker asked the board to act and indicated he did not believe the policy had been explicitly reviewed by the board when the agreement was approved.
No PenMet representatives spoke during the meeting and the transcript does not record a formal district response or proposed action at the meeting; the comment was entered into the public‑comment record.
