Council approves revised PlayLA project plans and accepts LA28 funding for youth sports expansion

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles City Council ad hoc committee approved a set of revised project plans and funding allocations for PlayLA, the city’s youth sports partnership program with the LA28 organizing committee, expanding programming and pilot sports and reconciling an overage from the 2023–24 season.

Veronica Polanco, chief innovation officer for PlayLA at the Department of Recreation and Parks, and Austin Dimas, chief operating officer for PlayLA, presented the department’s revised and proposed project plans for fiscal years 2023–24, 2024–25 and 2025–26. Polanco told the committee PlayLA has prequalified 90 sites, including 30 recreation centers and 37 pools, and that the program offers 55 able-bodied sports and 14 adaptive sports (with 25 Olympic offerings and nine Paralympic offerings among those activities).

Polanco said PlayLA exceeded expected enrollment in 2023–24 by roughly 85,000 participants, producing a reconciliation gap of about $4 million that LA28 has been asked to cover. For the 2024–25 revised project plan Polanco reported a projected enrollment of about 217,000 participants; for 2025–26 the department proposed a project plan requesting $33,125,000 with a…