We’ve long thought that the city of Burlington’s infatuation with pickleball, and the city council’s commitment to spend millions of tax dollars on additional pickleball courts, was badly misplaced.
Now that the 17-court pickleball Taj Mahal near City Park has been completed (at a cost of about $4 million), it seems few people are showing up to play.
Where is all the demand we kept hearing about? Oh, it was so urgent, council members were told, that they just had to rush to build the huge court complex, which finally opened after months of delay in May. The council also agreed to pay $150,000 a year for a company to “run” the pickleball endeavor.
In order to try to stoke some demand to justify their money pit, the city is now lowering the price for out-of-towners to play at the complex.
What?
The city isn’t supposed to be in the business of spending valuable taxpayer dollars in order to subsidize non-Burlington residents’ recreation.
But that’s what the council decided to do last week. [See separate story in this edition.]
We think the city made a fundamental error in going in so whole hog on pickleball at taxpayer expense.
Many other cities across the state have encouraged private companies to set up pickleball operations, and there are lots of both indoor and outdoor courts and venues across the state.
The advantages of the private approach should be obvious: the clubs, as privately-owned venues, pay property and sales taxes, and employ people, rather than cost taxpayers money.
There was no government funding for construction of private ventures we’re familiar with, and there’s none for ongoing operations, another of the expenses Burlington is having to absorb because of its taxpayer-dependent approach.
Now the problem is that few companies are going to be interested in setting up private pickleball operations in the city of Burlington, because the city is running (or trying to run) a large competing pickleball operation itself.
Perhaps the city could look into selling its courts – at least the luxurious setup at City Park – to a private operator, in order to get out of the business altogether.
Otherwise, we expect to see more and more expense with less and less benefit to Burlington residents.
