CARLSBAD
–
The senior citizens were charming, but they didn't dissuade the City Council from tripling fees to play softball.
“I'm 80 years old, I've had three major heart operations, prostate cancer, a defibrillator in my chest, . . . carotid arteries worked on, three divorces,” Chuck Anthony said, working the council chamber Tuesday like Johnny Carson at a Las Vegas nightclub.
“I daresay I'm a bionic man. I'm broke but I'm a bionic man,” Anthony said to laughs, as he asked the council to spare the North County Senior Softball League from proposed fee increases set out in the city's 2008-09 budget.
When Anthony challenged the council to a softball game, though, Mayor Bud Lewis got the last laugh, saying, “Chuck, your time's up.”
The council set up a new rate for seniors to use the fields: $5 an hour. That's less than the $25 an hour the city staff proposed, but more than the $5 a game the seniors have been paying.
“That's a tripling” of the current fee, Gordon Cress said yesterday after the vote, noting that $5 an hour translates into $15 for a three-hour game.
“(And) they want to charge us $25 an hour for a pickup game. That really ticks me off,” Cress said yesterday.
Council members Ann Kulchin and Matt Hall opposed the new fee, which is included in the $195.1 million operating budget the council approved. The budget takes effect Tuesday.
Officials with Carlsbad Youth Baseball also spoke against annual, piecemeal fee increases that eventually get passed on to ballplayers' families.
The council also voted to raise water rates by 20 percent and sewer rates by 9 percent, resulting in a 13.3 percent increase in an average household's combined water, sewer and trash fees. That bill will go up by $10.71 per month, to $91.34.
The council also approved a $57.4 million capital improvements budget.
Major projects include $5.7 million in improvements to the Carlsbad/Vista sewer mains, where the two cities are laying a pipe parallel to one that burst last year.
Also included are $900,000 to expand parking at Poinsettia Park and $5.75 million to widen El Camino Real between Tamarack Avenue and Chestnut Street.
Residents of Donna Drive and Sierra Morena Avenue asked the council to fund devices to slow speeders on their streets, and the council approved $200,000 to design “traffic calming” measures at those places.
The council delayed a decision on funding a downtown business group, the Carlsbad Village Improvement Partnership, saying it wanted more information before approving that group's $500,000 request.
Michael Burge: (760) 476-8230; michael.burge@uniontrib.com
