Residents and sporting groups in Waitaki appear happy to pay more for leisure activities, to improve the standards of facilities.
The Waitaki District Council (WDC) Draft Recreation Strategy for 2012-22 hopes to ensure better disabled access to walking tracks and parks, higher safety standards at council-owned playgrounds, and to allow the council to recover more costs from facilities, while providing better value for money for its delivery of recreational services.
Under the strategy, costs to ratepayers would be reduced, and the number of facilities would be determined by participation levels.
Facilities at Centennial Park would also be upgraded and cross-code sports partnerships supported.
A wider use of "user pays" is proposed to pay for much of the strategy, which seeks to raise fees at the Waitaki Aquatic Centre and introduce sports field user licences. However, public submissions have been largely supportive of the idea, although Sport Otago and the Southern District Health Board both urged caution to ensure any rises did not stop low-income families from taking part in activities.
Tourism Waitaki event development officer Jan Kennedy said Oamaru could not attract tournaments as facilities were not up to scratch.
Mrs Kennedy said that following the town's recent hosting of the annual Secondary School Hockey Tournament, Hockey NZ deemed changing facilities substandard, and the tournament may not return to Oamaru as a result.
"The future of sport in our region is to have fewer [but] well-maintained, well-resourced facilities that benefit a wide number of sporting groups and generate maximum usage."
Awamoa Football Club also submitted that more communal use needed to be made of facilities.
Only the North Otago Cricket Association was in disagreement over user-pays. Stephen Halliwell, submitting for the association, said the size of the rise in sports ground user charges was unclear, and added that council officers had been unable to provide details because they had "no idea" about the usage of their own facilities.
Providing sports grounds was a core business of the council, but both Centennial Park and Weston Park were "below standard", Mr Halliwell said.
The largest number of submissions came from Oamaru residents who wanted to turn Fenwick Park into a fenced dog park, where they could exercise their pets off the lead.
Dog owners in Oamaru, already prohibited from walking dogs in the town centre due to a council bylaw, said room for a dog park should be included in the proposals.
Tony Campbell said he was part of a group of 20 dog owners who regularly met at Fenwick Park to exercise and socialise their dogs.
"By turning this park into a safe place to run our pets, the council would be helping to eliminate the need for owners to take their dogs to places they are not allowed."
The WDC committee of the whole will put forward its final recommendations on the strategy next week .
