HomeMy WebLinkAbout01-13-2015 BW1 HallCOUNCIL MEETING: Q k %-- 1 ?-A0k5'
ITEM NO,: W
Christian, Kevin
From: Marx, Jan REC
Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2014 1:52 PM
To: Carol Hall DID, 09 Ui-'1
Cc: Mejia, Anthony
Subject: RE: Lights at Sinsheimer tennis courts.... please
Thank you for your message. I am including our city clerk in this response, so that it is considered agenda
correspondence for council's January 13 meeting.
All the Best
Jan
From: Carol Hall [mailto:carol@slohall.com]
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2014 8:59 PM
To: Marx, Jan; Rivoire, Dan; Christianson, Carlyn; Carpenter, Dan; Ashbaugh, John
Subject: Lights at Sinsheimer tennis courts.... please
To the San Luis Obispo City Council members:
I am writing to urge you to make lighting of the tennis courts at Sinsheimer Park a budgeted goal for 2015-
2017. The City of San Luis Obispo needs to provide lighted courts for its residents because:
The City only provides eight tennis courts to its residents (six at Sinsheimer Park, one at Islay Hill Park,
and one at French Park), and not one of those courts is lighted.
The only lighted courts within city limits are at Cal Poly (which are intended for use by students, not the
general public) and SLOHS (which are of poor quality because they use very outdated technology).
The City's parks provide lighted facilities for soccer, football, rugby, lacrosse, baseball, softball,
basketball, roller hockey, volleyball, and horseshoes —but not for tennis.
The peak times for tennis court usage on weekdays are 8:00 a.m. to noon (for those who are free to play
during the day) and after 5:00 p.m. (for the majority of players, who work during the day and are only free to
play in the evenings).
Once daylight savings time ends, those of us who can only play in the evenings on weekdays have no
City - provided courts on which to do so.
Lighting the City's existing tennis courts (especially the multi -court facility at Sinsheimer Park) is a
much more cost - effective way of increasing usable hours than would be the building of new, lighted tennis
courts.
Wealthy residents in the City can play on lighted courts at private clubs in SLO or Avila, but middle class
residents cannot afford private club membership, so the City needs to provide lights for them.
Modern tennis court lights are specifically designed to light only the courts, preventing light pollution of
the surrounding area. As an example, consider the new lights at the Arroyo Grande High School courts (which
anyone can turn on for free with the push of a button).
To prevent excessive noise late into the night, the lights could be timed to shut off automatically at a
certain time (e.g., 9:00 p.m.).
Tennis players support a pay -as- you -play system for lights, if that proves necessary. (Note, however, that
we have found the coin -box system at SLOHS to be very unreliable; a key system would work better. See the
system for Soto Park lights used by the Five Cities Tennis Association.)
For all of the above reasons, I urge you to please make lighting of the Sinsheimer Park tennis courts a budgeted
goal for 2015 -2017.
Respectfully,
Carol, Jim, James and Jason Hall
Brian and Shelle Ball