American Canyon may pass a law requiring background checks for volunteers who have contact with young children.

The American Canyon City Council is scheduled to take up a proposal on Oct. 6 that organizations such as youth sports leagues that lease city-owned facilities have all their volunteers undergo a Live Scan fingerprint check.

The police department would purchase the portable electronic fingerprinting laptop with a $16,000 federal grant, American Canyon Police Chief Brian Banducci told the City Council on Sept. 15. Fingerprinting, Banducci said, is quicker and less expensive than other types of background checks.

“We’re still moving forward,” Banducci said Tuesday. “Fingerprints are a pretty good way to determine if anyone has been arrested.”

Policies will have to be set and training arranged before the fingerprint program is implemented — possibly by early 2010.

The city already fingerprints volunteers of city-sponsored programs, said Randy Davis, American Canyon’s parks and recreation director. The new program would affect nonprofit organizations that lease the city’s fields, parks, buildings or other facilities.

Representatives for the American Youth Soccer Organization, American Canyon Little League and American Canyon Patriots Youth Football and Cheer all said their volunteers already undergo background checks, though those do not include fingerprint checks.

The majority of city Parks and Recreation commissioners recommended background checks be required for youth sports volunteers, though they declined to make fingerprinting a requirement. Expense and the possibility that coaches and others would be fingerprinted multiple times by agencies or leagues that do not share information were among the arguments raised against it.

But city councilmembers, including City Councilman Ed West, lean toward making fingerprinting mandatory.

“I think we should require it,” West said Tuesday. “We have an obligation to protect our kids.”

Gabriel Zepeda, president of American Canyon’s Youth Soccer League, an organization with 470 boys and girls between the ages of 5 and 18, said he and other parents support fingerprinting, particularly if it can be done in the city.

 “I’m all for it,” Zepeda said. “We all approve of it. If someone has something to hide they better not volunteer.”

In addition to city facilities, American Canyon sports groups also rent facilities from the Napa Valley Unified School District. The American Canyon Patriots Youth Football and Cheer, for instance, play home games at American Canyon Middle School. The district does not have a fingerprinting requirement.

In Napa, the city’s Parks and Recreation Services Department requires all staff and volunteers be fingerprinted prior to having contact with youth in the City of Napa’s sponsored programs.

“We do not, however, regulate the requirements of organizations and agencies outside of our department,” said Kelly Abernathy, recreation supervisor for the city of Napa. “We highly recommend that all youth organizations fingerprint and/or run a background check on their coaches, board members, employees” and others, Abernathy said. “At this time I am not aware of any organization that is not doing that.”