Vashon park and school board staff last week decided on an amount the park district should pay the school district annually as part of an agreement between the two organizations that governs public use of school facilities.

The decision represents the first time in nearly four months of negotiations that members from the two public boards have agreed on a payment amount. However, the $75,000 figure still needs to be brought to, and voted on, by each organization’s board. The park board met on Tuesday after press time to discuss the recent development, and the school board is meeting tonight, Wednesday.

The agreement under discussion — called the Commons Agreement — allows community sports groups and other members of the public to use school facilities while keeping user fees low. Under the current agreement, which is set to expire next month, the park district pays the school district $100,000 each year, meant to help with the school district’s $700,000 annual facilities maintenance bill. But earlier this year, park board commissioners cited a variety of reasons why they believe they should not have to pay the school district. Reasons range from what park board chair Karen Gardner calls “philosophical differences,” to the fact that the park district is facing millions of dollars in deferred maintenance and has a 2017-18 budget of just over $1 million.

Both boards have been gathering data and creating spreadsheets comparing school use and public use of school facilities since negotiations began in the spring, but measuring school facility use has proven to be easier said than done. Numbers have varied widely. The school district’s compilation completed by Human Resource Director Amy Sassara earlier this year showed public use accounts for 75 percent of overall school facility use and amounts to $400,000 in maintenance charges. Those numbers weren’t challenged until last Tuesday, when Vashon Park District Maintenance Director Jason Acosta presented to the park board the results of his own study of school facility use and utility bills and stated the annual fee to the school district should be around $50,000. He noticed that the school district’s numbers showed the park district’s annual payment was being used to cover utility bills in full.

“We should not pay for the school district’s water bills,” he said. “They (the school district) don’t do extra (work) for us to use the McMurray field. They do the minimum requirements regardless of if the park district is there or not.”

It was after this presentation that Acosta, along with Vashon Park District Executive Director Elaine Ott-Rocheford, met with Vashon Island School District Superintendent Michael Soltman and Facilities Manager Kevin Dickerson. The goal, according to Soltman and Ott-Rocheford, was to “identify incremental costs” to the school district from public use. It is the first time in the Commons Agreement’s more than 30-year history that both organizations have, together, attempted to calculate actual costs. According to former park board member Bill Ameling, who was on the board at the time of the agreement’s creation, the $100,000 amount was an arbitrary number that was settled on based on both districts’ financial means at the time.

Soltman said he realized at the meeting with park district officials that Sassera’s report may not be correct.

“When we looked at (Sassera’s) figures, I didn’t think it was an accurate representation of the costs only associated with Commons spaces,” he said. “Our entire power bill was included.”

Reached Monday, Gardner said she believes no one looked over the numbers in Sassera’s report.

“I think the school district has a bit of egg on their faces now,” she said. “Elaine and Jason fought back.”

Soltman said he is hopeful that with staff from both organizations now in agreement, the boards will follow and renew the Commons Agreement before it expires at the end of July. But Gardner said it will not be that easy.

“The board is not in congruency about what to do,” she said, explaining that the park board still disagrees philosophically that they owe the school district anything.

Park board members have been saying since the beginning of negotiations that they cannot find any other agreement in the country where a park district pays a school district for use of its facilities.

But school staff and board members say that Vashon is unique and what other organizations in other cities do is irrelevant.

“We assert Vashon’s history is unique, as is the relationship between the park district and schools,” Soltman said. “I don’t know how one makes the argument that the history doesn’t matter.”

Despite some members of the park board’s insistence that the payment to the schools should be ended, Vashon Park District commissioners last week introduced two motions proposing the park district pay the school $50,000 annually. Gardner said she is unsure how the recent agreement by school and park staff will affect those motions.

At last Tuesday’s meeting, park board members Scott Harvey and Bob McMahon — he was not in attendance, but his motion was read by board member Doug Ostrum — introduced motions that state the park district is willing to pay the school district no more than $50,000 per year.

Harvey’s motion calls for a new agreement. If the motion is adopted, no more payments will be made under the Commons Agreement. Instead, the $50,000 will go into a special school district account that will be used to replace the high school’s new artificial turf field — expected to be completed in summer 2018 — in eight to 10 years. The new agreement will be called the Fields Agreement.

“We (the park and school boards) have irreconcilable differences. We need to get this over with and move on,” Harvey said last Tuesday. “We’re never going to agree.”

Meanwhile, McMahon’s motion also proposes a $50,000 annual payment to the school district. He advocates for continuing the payment under the Commons Agreement, but wants the school district to keep quarterly reports documenting that the $50,000 is being used for facilities maintenance.

Both motions also call for the park district to bring a bond to voters in the next two years as a source of funding for the district’s more than $5 million in deferred maintenance and capital improvement projects.

Regardless of whether either of the motions are adopted or the boards follow staff agreement on the $75,000 figure, the school district will no longer be receiving $100,000 from the park district and is looking at a budgetary shortfall of at least $25,000 annually.

In earlier discussions, school officials said that if the Commons Agreement was not renewed, the school district would take over the task of scheduling fields and would seek to make up the $100,000 payment by raising fees for user groups. Asked last week if the school district would seek to recoup the $25,000 potential shortfall if the boards align with staff, Soltman said no.

“It’s an income stream that will be reduced by $25,000. However, it’s fair from the standpoint that we have a rational basis for this (amount). It’s on us to make it work,” he said.

Park district commissioners began raising questions about the intent of the Commons Agreement in February when longtime school board member Bob Hennessey proposed using half of the park district’s annual payment to fund the eventual — eight to 10 years from its opening — replacement of the new artificial turf field at the high school.

At an early February meeting, park board member McMahon expressed frustration that the school district would use “our money for their thing,” referring to the new field expected to be completed next summer. The line of questioning sparked the park district’s investigation into the agreements between school and park boards elsewhere, leading to the board’s current opinion that the agreement should not exist with a payment.

The park board is scheduled to meet again at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Ober Park office for a regular board meeting. All meetings are open to the public.