Editorial Editorial (April 29, 2005)

Enough's enough on lighted tennis court pleas

Pleasanton has more tennis courts than most cities our size. These include public courts scattered around the city and still more that are open to the public during non-school hours at Amador Valley and Foothill high schools and at Pleasanton Middle School. The city's Tennis Complex at Hopyard Road and Valley Avenue is a state-of-the-art facility with 10 lighted courts for year-round, day-long play with nominal fees charged to Pleasanton residents to help pay the cost of maintenance and utilities. But a group of six older players want more, with an emphasis on lighted courts, asking that the City Council add at least eight lighted courts to the 10-12 lighted baseball, lacrosse, football and soccer fields that are planned for the new sports complex on Bernal. Theirs would be a reasonable request if the city wasn't strapped for cash to more quickly fund capital improvement projects. Although it plans to build three baseball fields within the next two years at the Bernal complex, the rest of the fields and other plans, like for a cultural arts center and teen center on Bernal, are years away. Still, it makes sense for the conceptual plans for the public park at Bernal to be redrawn to include tennis courts and perhaps even more senior-focused sports as the project moves forward. Another option would be to add lights to the new courts at Pleasanton Middle School or those at Amador Valley and Foothill high schools. Although fenced off and locked after school, they are available to the public for a $25 deposit for a key that unlocks them. The deposit is refunded when the key is returned, which has no time limit to the holder.

Amador Valley has eight courts plus two half-courts, Foothill has nine and the two tennis courts at PMS are jointly maintained by the city and school district, replacing those once at the corner of First Street and Bernal Avenue. There are also four public courts at Muirwood Community Park and another two at Fairlands Park, although they are deteriorating and need new nets and to be resurfaced. As for lighted courts, most neighborhoods would not be supportive. Drive by the Upper Bernal fields at night during soccer and baseball season and you can also see the lighted-up sides of homes along the backside of those fields. That makes the Bernal sports complex, where lights are already planned, the best place to add new courts, if the City Council and taxpayers want to add that to the multi-million-dollar complex now on the drawing board.

As for the group of six, perhaps it's time for Mayor Jennifer Hosterman or someone else on the City Council to say enough's enough. They are becoming a nuisance with their meeting-after-meeting pleas that often take an hour at the start of each meeting before the council and those who have scheduled business to address on the council's agenda can begin their discussions. A few weeks ago, two highly-paid consultants cooled their heels at taxpayers' expense in the Civic Center corridors until they had a chance to talk about the Bernal plans, delayed more than an hour as the six senior tennis advocates made the same points they had made two weeks earlier. Hosterman, in her mayor's report on CTV30 community television this week, said the beginning of each council meeting is "open to the public, an opportunity for people to come down and voice their opinions and raise concerns or issues to the council." That's a fine policy, but for these six tennis players, time may have run its course.

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