For more than 30 years, the Vashon Park District (VPD) and the Vashon Island School District (VISD) have worked together to make school facilities and fields available for community use after school hours.

The last two weeks have been a scramble as user groups worked to understand why either board would be talking about terminating this successful long-term agreement.

It appears that both boards are slowing down the process in order to take in more information and to engage in more discussion with the community.

The VISD school board voted last Thursday to remove the March 10 agenda item related to the termination of the Commons Agreement. This news, along with a positive conversation at the VPD board meeting on Feb. 8 — specifically with VPD Commissioner Bob McMahon calling out that the scheduling system (Facilitron) and the Commons Agreement are two separate things. VISD Board Chair Toby Holmes made a similar statement at the Feb. 10 VISD board meeting.

Ahead of the Feb. 10 VISD meeting, both VPD’s Elaine Ott-Rocheford and VISD’s Slade McSheehy reached out to the user groups, indicating that both VPD and VISD were planning on moving discussions to a future Commons Committee Meeting (and not voting on it in March).

This shows a positive shift in transparency and partnership in considering the Commons Agreement.

The user groups urge full retention of the Commons Agreement based on three tenets.

Good for the community

• Providing full and inexpensive community access to school facilities since 1989.

• Tax base can’t afford one set of gyms for school kids during the day, and another set for the evening — the Commons is our community center.

• Generously fund school facilities for this dual-use purpose: 2017 Voters Pamphlet explicitly urged a yes vote to accommodate both school and community uses.

• VISD tax dollars maintain those facilities and VPD levy funds incremental community use.

• VPD funds excellent customer service with an on-site person to ensure a safe environment.

Good for VISD

• Community use encourages support of schools.

• Transfer payment from VPD.

• VPD insurance covers any accidents or damage.

• Don’t have to hire or redeploy school staff – can focus on educational mission.

Good for VPD

• Commons use is, by far, the most heavily subscribed community service VPD provides.

• Provides recreational and artistic venues to thousands for less than 10% of its budget.

• Ensures broad support for VPD levies.

Some might call the Commons “anomalous,” but it has fit our island for more than three decades and it works!

The evaluation of Facilitron as scheduling and operating process has yet to show what efficiencies will be gained from using it. VPD has a reservation system now, and processes one to three requests a week. Outside the large beginning-of-season reservations by the youth group and other perpetual user groups who make up the bulk of the fees and utilization, there is little room for scheduling efficiencies. Providing access to gymnasiums and buildings is manual and relatively expensive, and the Facilitron system does nothing to automate or improve that access cost.

The Facilitron presentation at the Feb. 10 VISD board meeting was inconclusive. A back-office administrator is still needed to authorize reservations and deal with changes to facility availability. There is currently no interface to schedule lights turning on and off. There is no access to the gyms without interacting with a local employee. But Facilitron will come to take drone pictures of the outdoor fields and set up a catalog of the facilities for free … well, for 10% of all fees going forward.

That 10% fee might be worthwhile to speed up the single-use billings for birthday parties, etc, but takes a big bite out of the thousand-dollar fees the larger user groups pay each season. In other words, it’s essentially everything VPD has in place today, minus the drone pictures and 10% ongoing fee.

Upcoming is the sharing of the financial costs VISD has related to community access. Folks should be watchful about the costs being purely incremental based on community use or include long-term maintenance or other capital costs.

Renewing the Commons Agreement is good for the island — let’s hope both VPD and VISD boards deliver for the community.

Nick Keenan, vice-president of the Vashon Island Soccer Club, authored this commentary with contributions from Robin Magonegil, President, Vashon Basketball, and former Park District commissioner David Hackett.