To Menlo Park City Council,
When I moved to this area, I was looking forward to playing pickleball in the same friendly and city cooperative atmosphere that was established where I was relocating from. Little did I know that I was stepping into an unorganized and push-it-down-river handling of the needs of the community as an entirety.
During the past year, I have been showing up to play pickleball at the very limited amount of courts and designated court times in Menlo Park per number of the sport’s players. Because of the overwhelming lack of facilities for the number of residents who have become avid players here - covering a wide range from children and teens, families, professional individuals, to senior citizens - I have had to travel long distances from here in order to have a reasonable amount of court time without waiting for an extended amount of time to play.
The restrictions on court space and court times for the amount of players in Menlo Park definitely needs to be seriously addressed as the need is present, not sometime in the future. There are hundreds of residents who are being negatively affected by not having the facilities to practice and play their sport of choice.
My understanding is that the tennis courts remain empty and unused for extended amounts of time, yet the city is unwilling to double-stripe those courts and assign those under-utilized tennis times to the overflowing community of pickleball players while a plan for permanent pickleball courts is planned.
I urge you to consider the solutions that are being presented to the city so that those who have chosen pickleball as their sport of choice do not have to wait years to play at facilities when there are already temporary solutions that exist for them to utilize available times on tennis courts when tennis advocates are not fully using the courts. It does not seem reasonable or in alignment with the needs of the city as a whole to single out pickleball as having to wait years for action to be taken - in the meantime preventing residents from playing their sport when there are easy and fast reasonable solutions.
Respectfully,
Maralissa Thomas
