Pickleball with Walkers?

 

PICKLEBALL ANYONE? 

The May 7th meeting of the Florence city council ended with some bruised feelings and a lot of pickleball courts in the future. I will discuss the pickleball courts first.

The agenda item 11s on the consent agenda read “A resolution with B H Craig construction company LLC. to provide labor, equipment, materials and incidentals necessary for the pickleball and tennis complex at Veteran’s Park for the Park and recreation department, in the amount of $9,397,000.00 to be paid from budgeted funds. Account # 196-954-48147, sponsored by Bill Jordan.” Once again, here is another multi-million dollar project that is listed on the consent agenda instead of the regular agenda. This may be a little “inside ballgame” for the average reader but all items on the consent agenda are voted on at the council meeting with one unanimous vote. They do not require separate discussion at the meeting before a vote is taken and are lumped in with agenda items such as paying travel expenses for city employees and small items such as repairing a garage door on a maintenance building. They are discussed by the sponsor, usually the department head, at the work session prior to the full council meeting, but it often depends on whether any of the council members ask any questions if citizens really learn anything about how the money is spent. Lately, that responsibility seems to have fallen on Michele Eubanks.

This is a quick side note but an important one and does pertain to this agenda item. Michele Eubanks lately has seemed to take the reins when it comes to questioning those who present agenda items to the council at the work session. I will admit, I am not her biggest fan. She has made some terrible decisions. The most glaring of which is the “F!” fiasco to rebrand the city logo. I will just let that “sleeping dog” lie for a while and continue my critique of her questioning points of agenda items. When Bill Jordan and two representatives from Craig construction, the winner of the contract, came to the podium, she was ready with her inquiries. She was totally on point.

Her first question was to ask Bill Jordan and company if they have any information on the popularity of pickleball into the future. At this, Jordan turned to a citizen in the audience, Bob Martin and asked him to come to the podium. Bob Martin is an avid pickleball player. He and his wife, Shelia, have formed a Shoals Pickleball club and are active on social media. He stated there were approximately 250 to 300 players currently in the area. At this Ms. Eubanks asked where this number started from and was this a high. Mr. Martin stated that pickleball started in the area a couple of years ago with about 20 people.

I do have a little knowledge about the origins and growth of pickleball locally since I know someone who used to maintain the nets the players used at an indoor facility locally. In checking with my source, the original pickleball players to the area were a couple who had a home here and one in Key West, Florida which they “wintered” at. They had returned to Florence one year with a request for one of the recreation centers to purchase and start putting up nets and reserve a time for something called “pickleball” in the gym each week. It was “all the rage” in Florida and they wanted to import this new activity to the Shoals! This was approximately in 2018. In a short time, the popularity of the sport did grow and the use of the court in the gym area of the recreation center went to 3 days a week. But, at least at this location, it did not attract the numbers that were listed. They averaged 15 to 20 players each scheduled time slot. So, Mr. Martin was off on his estimate of the start of play by a few years. And based on the numbers from the recreation center, 300 would be a high count for players. 

This is not to say the popularity locally and nationwide has not grown. It has. But there is a hitch. It has grown primarily among older people. You could quite accurately say this is an old person’s sport. According to the National Sporting Goods Association, the average age of pickleball players is 38 years old. The average age of tennis players is 23 years old, and the average age of skateboarders is 14. I threw that in given the hard time that many young people and their parents had in getting this council to do the minimum at the skateboard “arena” at Fairground Park when they asked for help. All they wanted was for the area to be resurfaced and painted. They finally got some work in the park but the bare minimum. Of course, most of these kids come from middle to lower income families. They don’t have “pickleball” money or second homes in Florida for the winter.

Twenty or even ten years from now will there be enough interest in Florence to support having 20 pickleball courts at Veterans Park along with a pickleball clubhouse and pickleball restrooms and even a pickleball parking lot? At 9.3 million taxpayer dollars, the sport better grow a lot faster than the current average from the one location of 50 players per year. At this rate, this “complex” will cost $7,734.00 per player. Of course, as councilman Jimmy Oliver stated emphatically, the money realized on this “investment” will be recouped in the form of various tournaments with the usual “tourist” spending. Mr. Martin stated that the Shoals Pickleball club had hosted a tournament locally a few months ago and attracted about 120 players. According to the Alabama Tourism Department the average visitor to Florence Alabama spends $808.00 for a 3 day stay. If Florence Parks and recreation hosted one tournament a month every month for the next 8 years, the city could recoup $9,308,160.00. Of course, all expenses such as staffing and utilities would need to be deducted so we might make that 16, 20 or 25 years to break even. Will the average pickleballer be able to serve while using a walker then? Science IS the future. My money is on the average age of the skateboarder or hoverboarder or whatever a young person comes up with as an exercise “fad” will still be 14. There probably will be no “winter” homes in Florida either. It will be in the Gulf of Mexico.

The other major action was in the work session an agenda item was added to erect a plaque on land owned by the city of Florence in front of the Lauderdale County courthouse by the confederate memorial statute. There has been a ton of media coverage on this controversy and the only thing I can add is the agenda item should not have been added at the work session. That was a backhand to both Project Say Something who designed the plaque and those citizens who are opposed to the plaque being placed. There is no good reason it could not have been presented with the other agenda items when they were released the day before the meeting. This seemed very “shady”. At the council meeting when voted on, the proposal failed 3-2. The council members who voted no seemed to think this would drive a wedge further with the county commission and stated they wanted to keep an open line of communication so that perhaps the city and county could work together to relocate the statute to Soldiers' Rest at the Florence cemetery. This seemed reasonable to me. Even remarks from the public seemed not to be as “passionate” on this subject as in the past but there were still the same calls of racism from some and a remark from Reverend Billy Ray Simpson stating that the council was courting “racist”, and that the council and all white people were going to vote for Donald Trump was alarming. This, of course, is wrong and borders on lunacy. I take umbrage at his remark. I am white and do my best not to be a racist and can guarantee Rev. Simpson I have not and will not vote for Donald Trump. I try not to see color but to me Trump really does look orange.

This is the FLORENCE DETECTIVE!