Simi Valley’s park and school districts may be teaming up soon to provide better care for three school-owned athletic fields that are in disrepair.

The Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District board gave its staff the green light last week to work out an agreement with the Simi Valley Unified School District to assume maintenance responsibilities for the fields at Berylwood Elementary School, Hillside Middle School and Apollo High School.

Pushing the proposed deal are several local youth sport leagues who say they’re tired of practicing and competing on run-down fields that SVUSD can’t afford to properly maintain.

Swen Schrami, president of Simi Valley Youth Soccer, said improved facilities would be a boon not only to his league but to all the sports clubs in town.

“During the tournament season when we need space and have teams coming from all over Southern California, staying in our hotels and spending their money here in Simi, we need more quality fields,” he said.

Although the park district has its own athletic fields, without the school fields there wouldn’t be enough space to accommodate the many Simi youth leagues that need places to practice and play.

However, layoffs in SVUSD have caused the fields to fall into a state of disrepair.

“The condition of the fields has never been good and will get worse in the immediate future due to large-scale layoffs by the school district, specifically their custodians and grounds maintenance personnel,” said Ed Hayduk, assistant general manager for the park district.

Lowell Schultze, associate superintendent in charge of business and facilities for SVUSD, said that while the district has done its best to maintain the fields to keep them safe for students, recent budget cuts have made it difficult to keep the grounds at a level that is acceptable to the sports clubs.

He said the school district’s maintenance crew is fairly small because the district can’t afford to fill vacancies. But if the park district takes on the maintenance of the three fields, then the limited grounds people will be freed up to deal with the other sites.

“I think it is a benefit for both of us—they will help us in some of our shortage areas and they will provide better fields for the activities they want,” Schultze said

Russell Platamone, regional commissioner of AYSO Region 121, Simi’s largest youth sports organization, said the upkeep by the school district at Berylwood hasn’t been very good and the field’s clumps and long grass have brought complaints from soccer parents.

“If you would consider this, I would appreciate it very much for the children so they play a little easier, a little safer, and the fields are maintained a little better,” he told the park board at their Feb. 4 meeting.

The three sites were chosen over others because RSRPD staff determined they will provide the most benefit to the community and to sports leagues that currently don’t use park district facilities, a staff report said. Altogether, the park district would be taking on 27.2 acres.

The fields would be maintained in the same manner as the district’s other parks, with a maintenance program that includes regular trash pickup, mowing, fertilizing and rodent control. Irrigation parts and equipment would be repaired or replaced as needed.

“We can use all the help we can get,” said Richard Rogero, president of Simi Valley Viking Football, which practices and plays on a field behind Apollo High School. “We currently pay for our field to be maintained.”

Schrami agreed, saying rodents are a big problem at Hillside and the youth soccer league sometimes has to fill holes with sand to make the field playable.

The park district would also assume scheduling of all fields and respond to any complaints or issues with adjacent neighbors.

All this will mean more work for the district’s grounds maintenance division. To handle the extra load, the district reorganized the division last November by eliminating three full-time positions and replacing them with nine part-time positions in order to increase manpower but decrease costs.

According to Hayduk, the projected cost for maintaining all three fields is almost $94,000 annually. However, due to the savings from the staff reorganization, the net cost would be about $48,000.

Park district board chair Elaine Freeman questioned whether the district was allocating enough funds to bring the “very poorly maintained” fields up to snuff.

“Once we become responsible for them, we will want them to be better than they are,” she said.

Hayduk said the park district has enough money in the budget to maintain the fields but that any capital improvement projects would be brought forward separately as part of the budget process.

A final agreement between both sides isn’t expected until late spring.