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After public comments from sports groups, Lubbock council splits 4–3 on turf‑field fee rollback on first reading
Summary
City councilors debated an ordinance to roll back Burrell Huffman turf-field fees to the FY2024–25 rate; users said sudden increases would harm nonprofit leagues. Council members were split between funding field replacement and giving users more notice; an amendment to roll back fees failed 4–3 on first reading.
After public comments from local softball organizers, the Lubbock City Council debated an ordinance Jan. 13 to roll back fee increases for the Burrell Huffman turf fields to the fiscal‑year 2024–25 rate and to provide affected users more notice.
Several citizen speakers representing local softball organizations told the council the new fee structure—which some speakers said was communicated in November or December—would significantly increase operating costs. "This increase is gonna approximately cost us about $5,500," Brian Hall, treasurer of the Lubbock Senior Softball Club, told the council. Chris Born, president of the Lubbock Senior Citizen Softball Association, asked the council to consider treating his group as a nonprofit and to grandfather the prior fee structure for a year so organizations could adjust.
City staff and council members emphasized the goal of creating a maintenance and replacement fund for turf fields. Councilmember Collins and others described the facilities as costly to replace and said turf typically requires replacement in 8–12 years; Collins told the council the city is "5 years away from needing approximately 1,000,000 dollars to replace them." Supporters of the fee increase said user fees appropriately allocate the replacement cost to users rather than raising property taxes.
Council members disagreed about timing and notice. The mayor and several colleagues said the fee concept was sound but the city failed to provide adequate notice to organizations whose budgets were already set; others stressed the need to begin saving immediately to avoid a larger funding shortfall. The transcript records differing fee figures in the discussion (the ordinance language referred to rolling fees back from $75 to $40 per the mayor’s comments, while staff also referenced fee levels of about $70 and $50 for different fields). Council debated whether to postpone implementation, refund fees already collected and how the fee change would be revisited in the annual budget process.
On a first reading vote the chair announced: "That amendment fails, 4 to 3 on its first reading." The meeting then adjourned with no further action recorded on the ordinance during that session.
