By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT — New user fees for the town’s athletic fields were approved Wednesday by the Board of Selectwomen to help recover costs of maintaining the facilities.

The new fees, which are charged to athletic groups and associations, do not pertain to Parks and Recreation Department programs or use of the fields by Board of Education programs or sports.

Efforts to recover the increasing costs of maintaining athletic fields are tied to consistent growth in use of the facilities, Parks and Recreation Director Jennifer Fava told the selectwomen.

The fee hikes not only will help the town pay for the cost of maintaining fields, but also to improve them, she said. 

The three user groups which will be assessed higher fees are: adult town leagues, field rentals by outside groups and local youth groups. The higher fees for local youth groups are limited to $25 per player, which will be added to individual registration fees.

“All youth programs have financial-need programs” for families who may have difficult paying or they can get assistance from the town, according to Carmen Roda, operations manager for the Parks and Recreation Department. He was responding to Selectwoman Candice Savin’s concern that the fee hike could keep some children from participating in athletic programs.

The cost-recovery process for maintaining Parks and Recreation facilities began in 2021, Roda said, and he and other department staffers have been meeting with groups since then to explain the process. The town has been paying not only for field maintenance, but also for field equipment such as goals and benches at some fields, he said.

“We are not keeping anyone from using the fields, but we are recovering our costs …We want to have premier facilities,” Roda said.

One group that objected to the increased fees, Westport Baseball & Softball Inc., hires its own staff to maintain some municipal fields that its teams use. The organization includes Little League, Babe Ruth and a softball league, Jeff White, chairman of the group, told the selectwomen.

Westport Baseball & Softball has served more than 900 children, he said, and has been in existence since 1950. 

“I want equity,” he said. 

First Selectwoman Jennifer Tooker told White that town officials have been talking with his group for years, and additional discussions are scheduled for later this week. A decision in field-use fees for his group will be made “outside of this new policy,” she told White.

Since it would be too difficult to make an exception for one group, the new fees will not apply to Westport Baseball & Softball and instead a memorandum of understanding will be worked out with the group. Unlike Westport Baseball & Softball, no other group pays the maintenance costs for the fields they use, Fava said.

The selectwomen voted unanimously to approve the new fees. 

The revised fee schedule is:

Pacts on firefighter entry tests

The Board of Selectwomen also approved two agreements pertaining to entrance tests for new firefighters. 

The agreements are for entry-level testing programs to be established for new firefighter recruits in a local consortium, including departments in Fairfield, New Canaan and Wilton, among others, said Westport’s interim Fire Chief Mark Amatrudo.

The Westport Fire Department currently has six job vacancies and 150 people have indicated that they are interested by filling out a Firefighter Interest Card on the town’s website, he said. 

Using the consortium’s testing program, candidates go online to file an application and also take the tests online. The consortium communities get results of testing for all candidates taking the exams.

“In the past, written tests were in person; now they are done online,” Amatrudo said. “But we do our own interviews.”

The next round of entry-level testing will take place within the next few weeks, he said.

Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman and has taught journalism at New York and Southern Connecticut State universities.