Meetings continue but there appears to be little progress in resolving the dispute between several county soccer clubs and the leaders of the Maryland SoccerPlex with one side calling the situation ‘‘excruciating” and the other saying it’s ‘‘disheartening.”
Open letters from both sides of the dispute were posted on Web sites and e-mailed this week and seem to have done little to advance discussions.
After failed attempts at resolution, the mediation team pulled together this summer by county park and planning officials has largely given over responsibility for the negotiations to members the County Council.
Heads of five of the six clubs in dispute met for the second time yesterday with County Councilmen Steve Silverman (D-At large) of Silver Spring, with Michael J. Knapp (D-Dist. 2) of Germantown joining the discussion.
A proposed agreement developed during a Sept. 3 meeting with Silverman is still on the table, but both the soccer clubs and officials with the Maryland Soccer Foundation, the non-profit responsible for the 19 premiere fields at the SoccerPlex in Boyds, have appealed directly to county soccer families in the past week.
Each has posted open letters on Web sites and e-mailed them to club memberships, giving greater insight to the dispute that has kept the clubs from agreeing to play their fall seasons at the SoccerPlex and has created financial uncertainty for the facility.
Doug Schuessler, executive director of 15,000-member Montgomery Soccer Inc., said there was some progress made at yesterday’s meetin©ög.
‘‘There was progress made in that we received a variety of assurances from the county that they would analyze the operation of the SoccerPlex and work toward a solution,” he said. Clubs were expected to meet and decide their individual positions on the proposed agreement Tuesday and Wednesday nights.
An hour before the yesterday’s meeting, Trish Heffelfinger, executive director of the foundation, said her group needed to begin seeking alternative users for the SoccerPlex if no accord could be reached.
‘‘We hope that today is the day. ... We need to move on. As you can imagine this is excruciating and it’s a tough way to run a business.”
Six of the eight youth soccer clubs that generally play at the SoccerPlex have refused to return, citing nearly $300-per games and foundation leadership that the clubs say is losing sight of its promises. The county has been attempting to mediate the dispute since early August but the first games of the fall season were held at alternative sites last weekend with no resolution.
Soccer families were pulled into the debate with the open letters.
Bill Hurley, president of Damascus Soccer Club, said his membership did not appreciate being exposed to the office politics of the situation by the foundation’s letter. ‘‘The sense I have is this is an outrageous development,” he said Monday.
Hurley said the clubs had believed they were nearing a settlement when the letter appeared. ‘‘That really put us back on our heels,” he said. ‘‘Suffice to say the open letter did nothing to have us think we could have a constructive discussion.”
‘‘They came into our living rooms with their letter,” said Schuessler, who said he’d received ‘‘dozens and dozens and dozens” of emails about the cyber-exchange. Most supported the clubs, he said.
But Heffelfinger said the time had come for the foundation to state its case. ‘‘After seven and a half weeks, we felt the foundation was being misrepresented to an awful lot of people and we needed to clear the record,” she said. Another foundation letter is planned.
Little is clear about the specific allegations contained in the letters. Heffelfinger’s detailed occasions where she said the club representatives’ conflict of interest negatively impacted the SoccerPlex as a business endeavor. She accused them, for example, of blocking attempts to expand both the number of organizations and the number of fields at the facility in an attempt to ‘‘limit the opportunity [to participate] to just themselves” — a claim the clubs dispute.
Copyright © 2005 The Gazette