TULSA, Okla. — Change is coming to sports complexes owned by the City of Tulsa.
2 News first told you about a change in management at Tulsa’s Savage Park earlier this week. Now we’ve learned there are even more changes.
Hilti, Savage, Patrick and Bales parks are all getting new management. Tulsa Parks Director Anna America said, these changes will allow more young people to enjoy playing organized sports while also saving the city money.
The City said for the last couple years it’s been reviewing its agreements with local youth sports leagues and the complexes they call home. After the review, America said they decided to bring one league in to manage four parks to balance the rental and maintenance costs.
“Tax payers are paying, say it’s savage for example. one of those complexes which is girls softball. Tulsa taxpayers are paying for the utilities and the maintenance on the facility which is about 50 thousand. forty to 50 thousand dollars a year and the rent that is being generated currently is about one thousand 500 dollars a year. so you can see there’s a huge gap and we just can’t afford to sustain all these complexes losing that much money every year,” said America.
She said they chose Tulsa Little League to manage the parks because they’ve been so successful at managing Lafortune Park. She said the league has also done a great job of implementing outreach programs across the city.
“Our number one priority is how can we serve the most Tulsa kids and in particular how do we reach out and expand programming in under served parts of the community. West and north Tulsa are really under served in terms of these kinds of programs so we’re hoping to really see some growth there," said America.
America said she wants to make it clear that no league will lose their spot at their respective complexes but the business side of things will now look different. She said the goal is to allow as many children as possible to play sports while saving the city and taxpayers thousands of dollars.
America estimates a 100 thousand dollar savings per year with these changes.
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