SEQUIM — The City Council has approved a contract with Sequim Family Advocates for the development of a Washington State Youth Soccer Association-sanctioned three-day soccer tournament in August.
On Monday night, the council unanimously approved the contract using Sequim city lodging tax funds up to $14,950 minus any funding that is received from the Olympic Peninsula Tourism Bureau in a tourism enhancement grant.
City Council members saw it as an economic development opportunity for the city that will attract hundreds of soccer youths and their families to Sequim, who would in turn use lodging establishments, restaurants and retail shops.
Diane Shostak, executive director of the Olympic Peninsula Tourism Bureau, has applied for a grant for the tournament proposed on the Albert Haller Memorial Playfields.
The playfields are on 13 acres at the city’s Water Reclamation Demonstration Park next to Carrie Blake Park between North Blake Avenue and North Rhodefer Road.
Sequim Family Advocates leveled and seeded the acreage with grass last summer after raising more than $300,000 in community donations.
Authorized to sign
City Manager Steve Burkett is authorized to sign the contract.
Councilman Don Hall, the council’s representative on the city parks board, asked that Sequim Family Advocates President Craig Stevenson meet with the board before the City Council approved the contract, but Burkett and Public Works Director Paul Haines said Sequim Family Advocates was actually responsible for the playfields’ maintenance and game scheduling under the city contract.
Stevenson said he would next schedule and market the tournament.
Tourism dollars spent around youth sports have become a “huge cottage industry,” Stevenson told the council, with many “Generation X” families making short vacation weekends out of such events.
While they shop in Sequim, those Gen Xers will be alerted about game results and times on their smartphones, Stevenson said.
With the fields in place and expected to open in the summer, the city is now prepared to host between 50 and 70 soccer teams and their families, he said.
“These are not blue-sky numbers,” Stevenson said.
“They are actually low end.”
By comparison, he said, Kitsap County’s soccer tournaments host upward of 100 teams.
Councilwoman Candace Pratt said she wondered if Sequim had the restaurants and other facilities to support such a large new event.
Because it is just for three days, Stevenson said, it would not be of the magnitude of Sequim’s Lavender or Irrigation festivals, Stevenson said.
Because it would be scheduled in August, the tournament would not interfere with other Sequim school-related sporting events, he said.
‘Win-win-win’
Council members called the new fields and the future tournament a “win-win-win” proposition.
“The kids of Sequim will benefit at the end of the day by what they have there,” Stevenson said.
“I think its a really good expenditure of LTAC funds,” Mayor Pro Tem Ted Miller said.
“As a matter of fact, I think it’s probably the best one that I have heard in years.”
The council, in other action, approved increasing the city’s annual contract with the Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce from $66,000 in 2011 to $70,000 this year, including $1,500 for promotional materials for the chamber’s Visitor Information Center.
The council approved the additional dollars in the city budget last year.
‘A little bit odd’
Miller said he thought it seemed “a little bit odd” that the city pays the chamber but the chamber is not paying a share for its operations.
Shelli Robb Kahler, chamber executive director, said the chamber owns and operates the Visitor Information Center at the corner of East Washington Street and Rhodefer Road as its contribution.
Burkett said there was some discussion over the past two years to find other Visitor Information Center operators, but “one of the biggest advantages the chamber has is they have a huge cadre of volunteers.”
Hays asked Robb Kahler to quantify the chamber’s contributions when it requests city funding again.
The council also approved a one-year temporary agreement with SunLand to handle disposal of the luxury golf course community’s sewage sludge that has not been renewed since 2004.
Negotiations for a new 20-year agreement are under way.
The 2012 budget anticipated about $60,000 in revenues from the biosolids treatment contract.
The one-year temporary interim agreement is anticipated to generate about $50,000 based on the estimated volume of biosolids to be treated.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
