In the last few weeks, many of you reached out to Seattle Parks and Recreation (SPR) asking them to create 8 or 10 pickleball courts instead of 6 at Green Lake, and also asking them to paint pickleball court lines in a color that we can actually see. If you are lucky, you might even have received a reply that said:
We [SPR] established [pickleball court layout] standards for these and future projects, based on what we saw that was successful in the pilot program. At the time we established the standards, SPR staff were holding biweekly meetings with Seattle Metro Pickleball Association (SMPA) board members, and at those meetings the SMPA board members raised various concerns about the standards.
This reply implies that SPR consulted with SMPA during biweekly meetings with SMPA representatives about establishing pickleball court layout designs and other relevant standards. That did not occur. SMPA was never informed that SPR was developing court layout standards, was never presented proposed layout standards and was never invited to provide feedback regarding the so-called standards that we never saw notwithstanding repeatedly expressing concerns to SPR reps. Although these subjects were raised by SMPA representatives during the biweekly meetings several times in the form of requests to SPR to inform us of what was being considered, SMPA offers to provide the City layout and construction information and offers to work with the City to develop designs that would mutually address the concerns/needs of the PB community and SPR, the offers were ignored.
Similarly, SMPA attempted to work with the City on the draft of the Pickleball Pilot Study Report and was stiff armed. This report was stalled for months beyond the promised release date reportedly for “political reasons” in order to facilitate massaging by the Superintendent and other ranking SPR personnel. In the end, the Report said what SPR wanted. No opportunity for review or public comment was given.