Soccer Symposium Task Force Report

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Attachment C Subcommittee on Inter-League Cooperation: Developing a Public-Private Partnership and Ensuring Cooperation Subcommittee: Charge: 1. How to make public-private partnerships work in Orange County with regard to soccer fields. 2. How to ensure cooperation among the various soccer organizations. 1. Public- Private Partnerships Public entities: The public entity in this case is Orange County. To the degree that the Orange County Parks and Recreation Department or other government agencies must be involved, they may act as agents, but ultimately funding must come through the Orange County budget. Private entities: Rainbow, Triangle Futbol, Durham-Chapel Hill Strikers, YMCA, Hispanic league, and corporate sponsors. A. Model of Public Private Partnership One model of a public-private partnership is found in Wake County, where the county contracts with the Capital Area Soccer League (CASL, a non-profit organization) to run soccer in the county. The county makes the land available for fields and CASL develops the fields. CASL runs leagues for age groups ranging from small children through adults (total about 17,000 participants) and finances its activities through fees from players, numerous tournaments at its various soccer complexes, and fundraising from corporate sponsors. B. Model for Orange County We suggest a modified model for Orange County. While large soccer complexes for match play and tournaments would be the responsibility of private organizations, the county would make land available for practice soccer fields (as near as possible to population centers). The private soccer organizations would jointly and cooperatively agree to lease these practice field sites for a nominal fee, develop these fields, and manage their use. 2. Private soccer organization cooperation. We envision cooperation among the private organizations as being similar to a model currently in use, the "Mid-states Challenge Soccer League." This league was formed three years ago by the Durham-Chapel Hill Strikers and Carolina United (now Triangle Futbol), but all local soccer organizations were invited to send representatives to cooperatively manage the league. The league is not owned by any of the local organizations. Each soccer organization provides teams to play in the league and commits fields for league use on Sundays. Each organization sends representatives to set policy, to direct the scheduling of league games, and to coordinate with referees. We propose that soccer organizations in Orange County be invited to send a representative to a body (Joint Orange County Soccer) that would be responsible for coordination with the county on the development of practice soccer fields and in exchange for that development, obtain the right to the management and scheduling of those fields with reference to guidelines agreed to by the county.