If the Arlington community wants to maximize accessibility to public athletic fields, the county government will need to start ensuring that those who reserve fields actually end up using them.
Technology is about to swoop in and help.
The Arlington Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) this spring will begin a pilot program using an phone-app-based check-in procedure at fields that have been reserved for group use.
“We want to start small,” said Greg Anselene, a DPR staffer who on Jan. 16 briefed the Arlington Park and Recreation Commission on the effort.
The process is expected to be simple – “you scan a QR code,” Anselene said.
Currently, county staff do make occasional rounds to see if reserved fields actually have activity on them, but both government officials and parks-commission members acknowledged that was an inefficient use of resources. Moving to a technology-based process is “a really good idea,” commission chair Jill Barker said.
“It will be really great to have hard data” on field usage, she said.
Another commission member, Adam Rasmussen, echoed the support.
“This is not meant to penalize . . . but help to get more reliable data,” he said.
County parks staff continue to walk a tightrope in juggling the needs of sports teams that need specific times confirmed in advance with those who simply want to stop by and play as the mood strikes. Currently, fields that are not reserved are available on a drop-in basis for groups of 10 or fewer.
“There’s high demand for this drop-in, unscheduled use,” Anselene said.
Several years ago, the county government set up an online calendar allowing the public to check on field availability, but “it’s [been] more of a secret than we hoped,” said Anselene, promising more outreach to let the community know of its existence.
Going forward, DPR also plans to annually issue a field-utilization report that tracks usage both on a countywide and a field-by-field basis.
Commission member Shruti Kuppa said that with growing needs and limited space, she appreciated parks officials’ attempting to discern “how usage is really happening.”
