Let down by government ... again .

It has taken me some time to get back and put my thoughts on the record. This is not due to my lack of interest or lack of passion on what is on my mind. I have been trying ... trying very hard ... to not post a negative comment regarding our President and the Congress. I still have nothing more positive to say since my last blog - so I will not comment (for now) on what is happening.

Instead, I want to express my deep disappointment with a local matter. As my friends know - I have been volunteering for several years with a local baseball program. This started when my oldest son wanted to play baseball. I started as many parents do - as an assistant coach. My role as assistant lasted until the 2nd week of the season and the head coach stopped showing up. I took over the role of 'Coach' with a passion and to this day - I love that job. The next year I was even more involved - Head Coach from the start and volunteering for anything else that was needed. The following year - I was running the program (for the 4-6 year old age group).
Over the next several years I continued to coach and took on more roles. I was the commissioner for multiple age groups - coaching multiple teams (some that I did not have child participating). I truly love coaching youth sports! The administrative side was a role that I did ... because it needed to be done. I believe we made the programs better by stressing sportsmanship, parental involvement and insuring every child had equal opportunity to share in America's past time. The programs grew every year, other programs around ours were shrinking - this had nothing to do with recruiting.. Word of mouth spreads quicker than any marketing campaign could.
There are a few dedicated individuals that I became very close friends with and it was through their (along with some of mine) efforts, ideas and commitment to the youth of the area , that the program flourished. Those few dedicated people ran and continue to run the program - not because they want to be the only ones behind the program but because no one else will. The local Park and Recreation council are supposed to support the program as it is a county operated organization along with a county run program. Instead, the Rec council is the biggest challenge to running the program. From field allocations (baseball is the largest spring sport but are last to get fields) to conflicts with other area events (baseball always gets bumped) - the Rec council seems to represent everyone in opposition to the program.
For the last several years I , and others on the board, have talked about moving away from paper registrations (where we hand type all the information into a large spreadsheet) to electronic. The Rec Council had been saying they were planning something for all sports programs but nothing ever materialized. So, last year ( June 2008), we decided to execute on our own plans. We looked at a number of options and decided on a solution. We officially opened electronic registrations (along with secure team web sites, team and organization calenders ...) in August of 2008.
This year has gone reasonably well - over 800 registrants. Teams are forming, communication to parents is up and we have reduced a good bit of the administrative overhead of previous years. This last point has allowed those who previously spent their evenings typing data into spreadsheets to more proactively plan for events for the kids. Remember the kids - they are who the program are for (not the administrators, not the coaches, not the Rec Council).

So, Why am I upset? I sat through a Rec Council meeting where the presented (or the vendor presented) what the new registration system would look like from this point forward. While I applaud their efforts and the fact that they have actually done something to help the programs - they appear to have done this for different reasons. In short - the Rec Council has taken ownership of the data and who has access to it. Why do I care? For starters - we, the volunteers, still are responsible for everything else - to include collection of fees. Secondly - a few years ago when we were asking for more fields - we were told to report the demographics of our program. Why? They wanted to limit which zip codes were eligible to register for a program using 'their' fields. In addition - instead of offering the programs (Judo, softball, theatre, baseball, basketball, football, soccer ...) the service - they have mandated the use of 'their' system. How do they do this? They have reported that will not approve budgets for any program who does not subscribe to the new system.

Here it is - the government is stepping in to an area that is already running well and taking over the specific area that does not need assistance. Instead of augmenting in areas that the current organization (or company) needs assistance with - they are taking over the piece that already functions well and by their own insertion will cause a breakdown in the effectiveness of the entirety. Let down by government .... again!