PEÑITAS — The city is looking to expand their summer sports program and trying to get the facilities to go with it.
City commissioners approved an interlocal agreement with the La Joya school district during a meeting last week that would allow the city to use the district’s facilities.
“I think they’ve used it for a few years,” City Manager Omar Romero said of using the school district’s facilities. “But I think this is the first time, to my knowledge, that we’ve formalized it and made sure that we have all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed.”
However the school district has yet to approve the agreement which school board Trustee Armin Garza said would depend on whether the city did ultimately decide to move forward with expanding their program.
Garza, a former Peñitas commissioner, is chairman of the city’s parks and recreation committee. He said if the city does decide to expand the program, it hopes to have its own facilities by repurposing land that was previously meant to house the new city hall, for a municipal park and sports complex.
“We’re going to repurpose half of that site, which is the side facing Tom Gil Road, to put in a sports complex, soccer fields, softball fields, that kind of thing that way the local community has a place to have those kind of intramural sports,” Romero said.
Romero said he was working with Garza to look at grant funding in hopes to accelerate construction of those facilities and have construction commence in time for the fall sports.
