Glenwood tennis enthusiast calls on city to reconsider installing pickleball courts
News | Published on October 17, 2022 at 11:47am CDT
By Tim Douglass
Glenwood resident Cody Bosek gave city commissioners an earful last Tuesday night hoping they would somehow reconsider a decision made more than a year ago to convert tennis courts to permanent pickleball courts.
Glenwood commissioners, after listening to Bosek’s comments, made no indication that they would reconsider their 2021 action to install permanent pickleball courts in City Park. The pickleball courts were funded through fundraising efforts by a group of local pickleball enthusiasts.
Bosek, who addressed the commission just before they adjourned the meeting, took about 20 minutes to read his statement. He said the reason he was coming before the commission a year after the decision was made was because he just found out about it “about a month ago.”
“The circumstance that led to your decision (two convert the city’s last two tennis courts to pickleball courts) show a gaping failure in the way the information was given to you to determine that decision, and the injustice of how this system can also be used to prey on the youth by those who understand how the system works,” Bosek said in his opening remarks.
He listed several reasons why no one who was in favor of retaining the city’s tennis courts showed up for the meetings a year ago when the issue was discussed. First, he said, the most prominent reason is that the biggest users of the tennis court are children. “They don’t understand city politics. They don’t have the ability to get to the meetings…”
“When you take something away from children, children need to be part of that decision,” Bosek said. He added that he knew that there were stories in the local newspaper, but questioned how many children read the newspaper.
He also said the city’s meeting time was not conducive to children or parents. “For instance, the tennis team and their parents are at sections tennis matches today,” and “if my children were on varsity instead of junior varsity, I would be there as well.”
He also listed that he believed that the city “fell short” getting tennis players and their families informed of the discussion by posting signs at the tennis courts or calling the high school tennis coaches or players.
He called it a myth that nobody uses the tennis courts and said it is difficult for younger children to use the high school tennis courts. He also questioned the “numbers” of those who showed up for pickleball and those who didn’t show up for tennis. “As I said above, this grossly shows how children can be preyed upon by those who understand how things work. The pickleball crew consists of 40/50ish people who are mostly retirement age who understand how to get things pushed through city meetings; they understand it’s a numbers game.” He also said they knew that between the tennis teams there are a number of 50-60 kids, boys and girls. “Not a single person reached out to the school to inform the school or any of the tennis coaches about the pickleball project. Why is that do you think?” he asked the commission.
He concluded by telling the commission that he had reached out to the pickleball group to see if they would be interested in joining forces with the tennis teams and parents, hold off on construction of the permanent pickleball court and allow the tennis group to work with them to fundraise. He said he had contacted them with a plan that would allow them to have three full pickleball courts and allows one tennis court to be shared, “which is the four courts they asked for last year.”
He said he got a “tough luck” response. He asked a second time and got no response.
He said he was now asking the city to enter into conversations with the pickleball crew “on my behalf since you have the power to do so.” He said he believed that since the project has not yet been done, it could be changed or delayed and asked the city to intervene before construction of the pickleball courts starts so that it would be less expensive to modify the current plan to save one tennis court.”
He thanked the city for listening.
Mavis Pattee was the only commissioner to comment after Bosek’s statement. She said she appreciated his passion, and added, “no children were preyed upon.”
