Jonesboro, AR – JonesboroRightNow.com – Officials from multiple city committees met to discuss how to best align youth sports and sports tourism in the city of Jonesboro.
During a special-called meeting between the Public Services Committee and the Jonesboro Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee on Tuesday morning, committee members discussed ways to align a path for both recreational youth sports and sports tourism.
Chris Gibson, chair of the Public Services Committee, said the meeting aimed to determine shared priorities between the two groups.
“We just need to align shared priorities between this group of individuals to make sure that we have the structure, the programming in place to propel our parks moving forward, as well as the integrity of the city moving forward,” Gibson said. “This is the brain trust that’s going to propel us into that future.”
During the meeting, two ideas were presented on how to align recreational sports and sports tourism: either creating a new commission for sports tourism or altering the makeup of the existing Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee by adding more members.
Regardless of whichever action is taken, it was proposed that the board would be made up of designees from the Advertising and Promotion (A&P) Commission, the Public Facilities Board, and Jonesboro City Council members. Including representatives from the four school districts in Jonesboro, which are Jonesboro, Nettleton, Valley View, and Westside, as well as parents, was also discussed.
David Daniel, chairman of the Jonesboro Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee, said having a strong tournament environment would increase sports tourism, with the under-development Ridge Athletics Center being a key component.
He added that Jonesboro needed to be a place where traveling teams knew they would have good competition, ensuring they would stay overnight for tournaments and games. This would result in additional spending at restaurants and hotels, which is where funding for the A&P Commission comes from.
“We are entering a time when we need to be swinging for each other, and not against each other,” Daniel said. “I think that you have to take the people with the A&P world. Everybody needs to be playing on the same team. I mean, absolutely on the same team. We might not always agree with each other, but when we come out swinging, we’re swinging for each other and not against each other.”
Jim Stearns was recently named Parks and Recreation director after the previous director, Danny Kapales, resigned in the midst of a federal investigation, which is said to involve the finances of the City Stars program. Stearns said his goal was to create something that aligned with the Master Parks Plan. This is a plan that outlines how the department’s offerings can meet the long-term needs of current and future residents.
“What we’ve talked about as a staff is creating a unified vision for what we’re looking for, for Parks, and we’ve come up with a lot of ideas,” Stearns said. “We want sports to be accessible for any kid that wants to play. That’s probably number one. We are focused just to make every effort that we can to create programs that kids want to play in [and] grow those programs.”
Since the meeting was specially called, no legislative action was taken, although committee members said there would be more discussions in the near future regarding more concrete actions.