HomeMy WebLinkAbout01-13-2015 BW1 HutkinCOUNCIL MEETING: a
ITEM NO,:
Christian, Kevin
From: Mejia, Anthony
Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2014 5:12 PM DEC 0 9 2014
To: Christian, Kevin
Subject: FW: Lights for Sinsheimer Tennis Courts. r er
01/13/15
Anthony J. Mejia, MMC I City Clerk
c:Iey (if Sall tills omspo
990 Palm Street
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401
tel 805.781.7102
From: Marx, Jan
Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2014 5:07 PM
To: Maria Hutkin
Cc: Mejia, Anthony
Subject: RE: Lights for Sinsheimer Tennis Courts
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
Jan Marx
Mayor
,t 4 CITY OF
za Sfln LUIS OBISPO
Office of the City Council
990 Palm Street, San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 -3249
E jmarx @slocity.org
T 805.781.7120
slocity.org
From: Maria Hutkin [mhutkin @hutkinlaw.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2014 4:59 PM
To: Marx, Jan; Rivoire, Dan; Christianson, Carlyn; Carpenter, Dan; Ashbaugh, John
Subject: Lights for Sinsheimer Tennis Courts
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public) and SLOHS (which are of poor quality because they use very outdated technology).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,
Maria Hutkin
2