No on Sports Complex MOU

One of the votes we took at the Mayor and Council meeting on Tuesday was to approve a MOU for the City and the Brunswick Junior Railroaders to share responsibility for maintaining the football fields in the Sports Complex (on the east side of town near the middle school). The Council split 4-2, with four in favor and two opposed. I was one of the nays.

The debate wasn’t over whether to team up with BJR to take care of the fields, which we all agreed with. The point of disagreement was a provision in the MOU that would restrict the use of the fields by other organizations to youth sports only. Adult teams wouldn’t be allowed to play on them. If the nays had carried, we would have asked BJR if they would consider changing that restriction.

The argument for the restriction, as I understood it, was that adult sports cause more wear and tear to the fields and therefore more burden on BJR for maintaining them. BJR has a long history of putting its own time and resources into keeping up the fields there, so that argument has merit.

I felt that those concerns could be addressed, for example by requiring an adult league that uses the fields to contribute to their maintenance. We also all seemed to agree that it made sense to prohibit semi-pro teams from using the fields, so the question centered on recreational and club leagues only.

My objection to excluding adult teams was based on two things. One is that the City owns the Sports Complex and has some responsibility for maintaining that part of it, even under the MOU. The City also is currently working on improvements to the complex. Anything the City does is ultimately funded by tax dollars, which we all contribute (even if indirectly through state or federal grants), and so the idea of local adult teams being kept off any Sports Complex fields didn’t sit well with me.

Second, I don’t think we should put up obstacles to adult recreational sports. There are problems everywhere from people being bored and alone in front of our screens—we all know it. Team sports are a great way to counteract that: they’re social, physical, and competitive, all at once.

So, I said (undiplomatically, in retrospect) that the adult use restriction was a dealbreaker for me. But that was true only because the rest of the deal was good. The MOU passed regardless, and I’m confident it will be beneficial to the public. There will be a multi-use field on the other side of the complex that adult teams can use by coordinating with the City, along with the fields available through Frederick County at Othello Park.

You can find a copy of the MOU here, in the 2025-02-25 Agenda on page 102.