2009 Beverly Hills City Council Imposes Tax on Youth Sports Organizations
To All AYSO Parents, Players, and Friends:
Unfortunately, the City of
Beverly Hills has decided to tax all youth sports
groups. The tax was passed by the City Council by a vote of 3 to
2 on July 7, 2009. Together with Little League and Beverly Hills
Basketball League, which are also adversely affected, we will
work on the many issues raised by this tax.
For this season, AYSO must pay
Forty Thousand Dollars ($40,000.00). Next year, the tax is
estimated increase to more than $70,000.
Your Board of Directors decided
not to raise fees for 2009 at this late date.
On July 8, 2009 your Board of
Directors met to discuss the budget reductions necessary. We
decided that our top priority was to provide our players the
best possible soccer experience based upon all of our core
principles: Everyone Plays, Positive Coaching, Balanced Teams,
Good Sportsmanship, Player Development and Open Registration.
The cuts implemented are the
following:
- Eliminate Trophies for all age groups
- Eliminate Annual Board and meeting dinners
- Eliminate Non-capital donations,
- Eliminate Free Yearbooks (by charging $5.00 per book)
The decision to cut the trophies
was particularly difficult. However, by eliminating trophies, we
save close to Twenty Thousand Dollars ($20,000.00) which is
almost half of this year’s tax. We understand these cuts will be
unpopular but we do not have a choice.
Our policies with respect to
refunds are unaffected. Full refunds will be honored if
requested before August 1, 2009. if you desire a refund,
please email our registrar, Melissa Krantz at
registrar@ayso76.org. Teams will be formed in mid to
late August and parents will be contacted on or after August 25,
2009. If you are not contacted by September 1, 2009 please let
contact Melissa.
We are planning an exciting
season. We will continue our extra open practices that we
started on Monday nights last year. We will have professional
coaches to help coach our coaches and energize our program. In
short, our children will have fun and our program will rise to
the challenge.
Jeffrey S. Pop,
AYSO Region 76 Commissioner