Toronto parents will not have to pay the controversial new field fees that would have made summer sports significantly more expensive.

City council will waive the fees for 2012 at its meeting next week. A decision on fees for 2013 will be made at a later date.

“That’s great news. It’s nice that they’ve solved the problem that they created. So we’re happy for that. We look forward to having a conversation about 2013 fees, and we need to have that discussion finalized by September,” said Andrew Pace, president of the East York Baseball Association, which had received an unexpected $53,000 bill.

Councillors of all political stripes, and Mayor Rob Ford, appeared not to notice that the fees were included in Ford’s 2012 budget, which put a new emphasis on recovering the city’s costs. League administrators learned of the fees only when they received hefty bills — after they had registered players. An outcry ensued.

“The actual fees are reasonable compared to what neighbouring cities charge. It’s just the surprise element. It’s a shock,” Doug Blair, general manager of the North Toronto Soccer Club, said in February.

The city’s recreation chief suggested a plan this week that would have allowed leagues to obtain “financial relief” by submitting formal declarations that they tried and failed to collect the additional fees. But many councillors said that idea was unsatisfactory.

On Tuesday night, administrators, parents and players from baseball, netball, lacrosse, ball hockey and soccer leagues criticized the fees at a meeting organized by left-leaning councillors. One player called the policy a “tax on kids.”

Mayor Rob Ford, a football coach who speaks often of the value of youth sports, would not commit to a position on Wednesday. But he announced late Thursday, through a council ally, that he would endorse a motion to waive the fees and find the $1.5 million elsewhere in the recreation budget.

The ally, Councillor David Shiner, said the recreation department would be able to locate the savings without affecting other services. The department will have extra money, he said, because of the city’s recent deals with its unionized employees.

Councillor Janet Davis, who had organized the opposition to the fees, met with Ford on Thursday. She and some other councillors prefer to leave the recreation budget untouched and take the $1.5 million from the city’s 2011 surplus, but she said they would come to an agreement with the mayor’s staff over the weekend.

Ford has been frequently criticized, even by supporters, for refusing to seek consensus with council colleagues. Shiner, standing with Ford’s policy advisor and press secretary in a hastily arranged media scrum late Thursday, said he wanted to emphasize that the new plan is “a collaborative effort amongst all members of council.”

“We want to make sure that everybody’s in agreement, because we all agree on the fact that it’s not right,” he said.

Said Davis: “I’m thrilled that the mayor has come around and accepted that we need to fix this problem. And I think that once again we’ve shown that the people of the city want a city that provides services for our community.”

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Pace said his 650-player baseball association would have had to charge families an extra $25 to $150 per player depending on their age and level of play. Some of them had difficulty finding the money to enroll their kids even without the added charge, he said.

“We’d now like to have some discussion with the city, some consultation and healthy debate, and know in September what the lay of the land is, so we can plan. Because we set our budget in October,” he said.