For starters, your Board had big plans to open registration on November 15th, but unfortunately we've run into some major tech snafus. We live in a tech driven age so we suppose this is to be expected, but good golly is it wildly inconvenient!
To make a long and confusing story short, we are basically locked out of the backend of our website, and could potentially lose our domain and access to our emails as well. Talk about a beginning-of-the-season nightmare..!!😅
Without the ability to access our website, we quite literally cannot create a program for you to register for.
We are actively working with an IT specialist and hope to have everything back to normal within the next week or so. Again, we sincerely appreciate your patience as your NON-tech-savvy-yet-humble-volunteers work this out.
Secondly, in an effort to help families budget, we have attached the registration flyer below. You will notice that the cost per division has increased. Please know that your Board battled heavily with this increase. Unfortunately, due to the rising cost of goods, services, insurance, etc., we were simply left with no choice if we are to stay afloat and continue operations to the best of our ability.
To hopefully help ease some of the sticker shock and explain the rationale behind our decision, we'd like to provide you with the following information:
- Our registration fees are aligned with Hangtown LL, and remain the lowest in our District (there are 12 leagues in our district)
- We incurred an increase in the District-wide Player Assessment Fee, now $8 per player (these are annual fees each league pays to our District based on the number of players registered, regardless of whether or not they end up playing)
- We incurred an increase in Team Charter Fees payable to Little League International (these are annual fees due to LLI that allow us to play and operate under their organization)
- We incurred an increase in cost for our Insurance Policy premiums. (Note that we are required to hold a minimum of a $1 million policy, even if we only use a facility/field once. This often leads to having to purchase upwards of half a dozen policies per season)
- We incurred an increase in cost for our umpires, which is why the upper divisions increased slightly more in margin than the lower divisions
- We are going to incur an increase in cost for uniforms (NO. MORE. A's!!)
- We are going to incur an increase in cost for replacing our outdated and non-compliant equipment/gear
- We are going to incur an increase in cost for awards/plaques/medals due to tariffs
- We are going to incur new costs (in the thousands) due to new California legislation regarding safety equipment in youth sports (AB1476 & AB310)
Additionally, please know that your player registration fees are also utilized to cover field prep and maintenance costs (bases, chalk, etc.), tournament costs, operations (utilities, portable toilets, supplies, marketing, background checks, etc.), taxes, and the like. The cost of just about everything has risen and we are simply trying to keep up. We appreciate your understanding in this and are happy to answer any questions you may have regarding this increase.
***PLEASE NOTE that we still plan to host and honor an early bird discount of $50 off the first player's registration through December 31, 2025, as well as honor payment plans, should you need to utilize one.
