![Bud Tipton, the football director of the Crestview Area Youth Association, addressing the city council. [GENEVIEVE DiNATALE | NEWS BULLETIN]](http://127.0.0.1/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/ghows-DA-55cf5c20-3d4e-0ec8-e053-0100007fc7fd-1d275030.jpeg)
CRESTVIEW — Bud Tipton, the football director of the Crestview Area Youth Association, asked the City Council Monday if they would consider outsourcing football and baseball.
“Niceville outsources baseball, soccer, football — everything is outsourced in Niceville. Same for Shalimar, the same for Baker, so what we want to do is, ‘hey,’ maybe CAYA isn’t good for baseball, maybe [that particular sport is] good for the YMCA, maybe it’s the Veterans Association — we just want something better for the kids,” Tipton said.
Following Tipton’s presentation, Councilman J.B. Whitten asked, “Do we want to explore outsourcing our city sports? If we want to do that we would have a public workshop.”
Tipton replied, “If the city council can outsource it and go out for a bid, programs like CAYA, most of those are outsourced. My goal is to provide the safest equipment. We want to set up a feeder system so the schools actually get good-quality athletes.”
The president of CAYA, Terry Jackson said, “Mainly we wanted to come together and work with the city because they have facilities we don’t and they are bound by things in their charter that they can’t do that we can. Like with sponsorship and that type of stuff.
"We can take on sponsors to help upgrade facilities, help sponsor individual teams, so we can bring in Little League and support All-Stars and bring in tournaments for travel teams during the summer time."
“We want to work with the city, we don’t want it to be us against them,” said Jackson.
And in response to the idea that CAYA may want to take over Crestview city sports, he said, “We want to work with them; they provide the facilities and the maintenance, we pay them for that and we run the organization of the baseball and the football.”
No public meeting on the proposal has been scheduled. Further decisions will need to be made before city officials take a step beyond Monday's preliminary discussion.
"Nothing has been decided at this point and the discussion was to have a workshop sometime in the future, but no decision was made," City Clerk Elizabeth Roy said.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: CAYA suggests outsourcing city sports