Last week, Washington City Council approved an Optimist Club of Washington request to raise its registration fees for its youth soccer program by $5 for the upcoming fall season.

Patty Peebles, Optimist Club president, explained in a letter to council that because of the increased cost of shirts, insurance, referees, scholarships, equipment, credit card fees and running background checks on coaches and managers, the registration fee had to increase.

In years past, athletes paid $25 to play soccer and with council’s unanimous decision, the fee will be $30 for the fall.

“Adding the $5 for the entry fee is allowing us to continue the program for the children and provide a quality program that we have been giving them,” Peebles said. “We’ve also been able to sponsor children who can’t afford to play.”

Peebles said this fall, the club will sponsor a child, whose father is in Afghanistan and can’t afford to play.

“The Optimist Club helps to sponsor children who can’t pay any fee at all or can only pay part of it,” Peebles said.

Peebles said that in the 2014 budget, the cost for each player had risen slightly over $12 from $50.17 to $62.59 over the last two years.

“With our planned fundraiser and sponsor revenue, we show that we need to charge players $33 to break even,” Peebles said in the letter. “With adjustments to our expenses we will be able to end up close to even in our program by charging $30 per player.”

According to Optimist Club officials, the organization tries to find sponsors for all of its youth soccer teams, but have had a hard time doing that recently. Peebles said the Optimist Club sponsors the remaining teams that cannot get an outside sponsor.

Last fall, the Optimist Club had 45 teams and 560 children participate in the youth soccer league.

According to city officials, the Optimist Club’s request to raise its fees could lead to other youth organizations doing the same in the near future.

“I imagine the youth league football and the rest of the leagues will probably follow suit,” said Mac Hodges, Washington’s mayor. “They had a $25 fee, the cost of the program has gone up they asked for an increase in the dues, and I’m sure we’ll be increasing fees for all the other programs.”