Confusion over fees charged to athletic travel teams has led the Limestone County Board of Education to consider updating its rules on charging organizations and sports teams for use of school facilities.

The issue came up at Tuesday’s board meeting, when it was brought up that some travel softball teams were not being charged for using school fields for practices.

Board president Bret McGill said a fee list was agreed to last April because of local churches and organizations using school facilities.

“We thought everything was fine, and then the other night, we found some teams were not paying the fee,” McGill said. “It’s travel ball, but it’s not really travel ball, because it’s all Limestone County players. But they’re still a travel ball team, not a Saturday league rec ball or a school-sponsored event.”

However, when Interim Superintendent Mike Owens looked at the fee structure agreed to last year, he discovered it did not include baseball or softball fields.

“Mr. Owens discovered when we developed the fee structure back last April, it covers facilities like gyms and classrooms, but it didn’t cover athletic fields,” McGill said. “It did blow up into a bit of a brouhaha, but I don’t think anybody was doing something they shouldn’t have done. We feel like the taxpayers fund the schools, so if somebody wants to use our fields, they should be able to. But we also don’t want them to use the fields and the principals (of the schools) have to take money out of their budget to pay for the use.”

McGill said school principals will write a check to pay for expenses with the school and send it to the school board for approval.

The biggest expense with teams using the fields is the utility bill, which is much higher than usual if the lights are turned on at the fields multiple nights per week.

“The lights will be turned on four nights per week and the principals will come to us with those bills,” McGill said.

McGill said in the past, teams have hosted tournaments on the fields, making $5,000-$6,000 without having to pay a dime to the school board. He said the board doesn’t want to come off as greedy, but needs to at least recover the cost of teams using the facilities.

“We don’t need to make money, but we need to recoup the cost,” he said. “We don’t want the principals to have to pay out of their school’s budget for things they don’t need to. And we need to be fair across the board.”

McGill said the board would have to come up with a fee structure for field usage, which could be different for each field.

“The fields at Piney (Chapel) don’t have lights, so we don’t have to charge for electricity, but there would need to be some upkeep to the field,” he said. “We will have to come up with a number for each field, and it will need to have a start and end time. We don’t want teams to just have use of the fields indefinitely.”

McGill said the board would discuss the item at its June meeting.

“Either we’ll have to have a fee structure or not let these (travel) teams use the fields,” he said. “But I think we’re on the right road to solving this issue.”