The Vashon Park District board met Tuesday after press time to discuss, and possibly vote on, a proposed new agreement that governs public use of school facilities.

The Commons Agreement allows public sports groups to use school facilities, but requires the Vashon Park District (VPD) to pay the school district a $100,000 annual fee, meant to help with maintenance costs incurred by public use. The proposed new agreement would see the cash-strapped park district paying $50,000 per year for the first two years of the agreement with an increase to $75,000 after that — a figure previously agreed upon by school and park district staff.

“We agree that $75,000 is appropriate. If you can’t afford it, let’s do $50,000 until you can afford $75,000. That’s rational,” Vashon Island School District (VISD) board member Bob Hennessey said during a meeting with park board staff and board members last week, where they agreed on the new proposal.

VPD board chair Karen Gardner who has said throughout the negotiation process that the park and school boards have “philosophical differences” when it comes to the agreement and has questioned whether the park district should be paying the school district at all, agreed with Hennessey. However, she said she was concerned about whether the rest of the park board would agree.

“I don’t know if I can sell this to my board,” she said, explaining that while she would love to have a unanimous vote, she didn’t think it would be possible.

Reached Thursday, she said she hoped the board would vote and approve the agreement Tuesday, but she could not guarantee anything.

Park district board member Scott Harvey said Thursday that he had not yet seen the proposal, but it sounded like something he could support.

“That’s not quite what I would like, but I think it’s good enough to work,” he said.

He previously introduced a motion to lower the annual Commons fee to $50,000 and while that motion is still on the table, it will likely be dropped due to the new proposal.

If approved by the park and school boards, the proposal will not affect user fees charged to community sports groups. However, at the meeting of the two organizations last week, VISD Superintendent Michael Soltman, VPD Executive Director Elaine Ott-Rocheford and Gardner acknowledged that the current fees — $15.75 per player per season for club sports teams — are too low.

Ott-Rocheford explained that, for school district facilities, the park district brings in $20,000 annually from user fees. But, the park district has paid staff who are responsible for providing access to school facilities and scheduling use of those facilities. They come at a cost of $30,000.

“It’s a net hit of $10,000 to us to have access staff relative to user fees. It’s not a break even,” she said.

Soltman advocated for raising fees and said fee revenue should fund the park district’s Commons Agreement payment.

“You’re going to have to raise the fees, and I think you can be more aggressive in raising fees than you think,” Soltman said. “I think that if you can make up $20,000 or $25,000 or $30,000 with a fee increase and it makes you able to make the $75,000 commitment, you should. I think you can mitigate a lot of this by raising fees.”

But former park district commissioner and current Vashon Island Soccer Club board member David Hackett, who was the lone audience member at last Tuesday’s meeting, pushed back.

“I think before you serve up the users, you need to give a little bit more thought (to this),” he said. “Currently, per user, it’s a $15 to $20 per season charge, so I don’t think there’s any problem looking at what market rates are, but you’re talking about kids, you’re talking about families … I don’t think you’re going to make up $25,000.”

Ott-Rocheford conceded and said that when the district raised fees 5 percent in February 2016, there was “a lot of push back” in the community.

“It has to be a slow process” she said.

Commons Agreement negotiations have been ongoing since February and have, at times, become contentious. Park board member Bob McMahon began looking into the agreement, its history and its necessity after Hennessey floated the idea of using the park district annual fee to fund the eventual replacement of the high school’s new artificial turf field. McMahon realized that the agreement is unlike any other in the state and called for a closer look at it. Since then, both the park and school districts have compiled data relating to the cost of public use of school facilities.

The current proposal represents the first time in the decades-long history of Commons Agreement that the two entities have worked together and calculated actual costs.

If the agreement is approved by the park district board, it still has to be approved by the school board. A meeting date has not yet been set.