Supply and Demand Recreation Scheduling

Warning.  What follows are the thoughts of an entitled, whiney old, lifelong resident and recent Pickle Ball aficionado but do not necessarily represent the thoughts of the pickle ball community, or truthfully, anybody else.  The following may prove toxic to the young and athletic, good-looking and taxpaying members of this town, but I feel compelled to speak up. 

I remember when Bonnie Park and Jody Graham started Basin Recreation and my wife served as Chairwoman of the Board when the horse people were trying to take over the Basin, so I have some history with the organization, it’s mission and it’s madness.  I have served on County Boards and know the challenge of taxpayers as customers and clients, shareholders and stakeholders, in an affluent resort town.  I know, and like, many of the employees who serve their fee-paying clients daily with their qualified and courteous contributions to our county.  They know we are the customers, and as Nordstrom's and Deer Valley say, the customer is always right.

I know I am a worn-out old guy with no remaining athleticism or skill, with nothing better to do, that likes to waste his mornings before nap time with whacking Pickle Balls at other old people, women, altzhimers patients and handicap players. I played handball as a NYC kid, paddleball with my dad for haircuts as a teen, racquetball for dates in college and squash for macho respect after that.  It is all the same game but I understand the natural lack of respect for our ilk, since I scoffed at P-ball before I started playing, but it is moderate, low impact, social exercise that we play with friends and family. For six hours a week I am not invisible to attractive, younger women in Lycra or tennis skirts.  I also know we can appear haughty and rude when we don’t get our way, or say thank-you enough when we do.  As Don Draper said ‘that’s what the money is for.'  But we just are frustrated, non-athletes posing as Olympians of the whiffle ball courts. I get it that it is a silly game with a silly name like Cornhole, that gets no respect, but it is social, sporty and fun nonetheless.

I see lately that several big recreational bond issues that included more pickle ball courts have been rejected because of the exorbitant price and taxpayer fatigue.  Usually if something has open space, trails and recreation in the title we are all-in but things seem to be changing, and I am sorry for that.  This in spite of the fact that voters usually pay half the taxes of the non-voting homeowners who make up more than half the district.  So we have been turning down improvements lately that someone else is primarily paying for. We can be ‘make do’ people if we have to but that is like cutting bus service or closing liquor stores because they are too successful, to do more with less.  As Yogi said, ‘no one goes there anymore, it is too busy’.

I understand that the goal is to make as many diverse people happy as possible and provide a wide variety of opportunity to all participants, but I find a serious lag between supply and demand I cannot ignore any longer.  While 50 people play P-ball and wait for a court on summer mornings at Willow Creek, contiguous tennis courts stand empty waiting for someone to play.  There is no effort to fill those courts with temporary nets that could certainly yield if someone comes to play tennis.  In the winter the same 50 P-ball people line up to pay and play indoors but must stare at adjacent empty basketball courts reserved for phantom basketball players that could certainly yield if they ever choose show-up.  Reserving these courts for the chosen few who don’t show, only helps to preserve the expectation and exacerbate the conflict.  If half of life is showing up, scheduling should the other half.

I’m thinking that we don’t need any more pickle ball courts, just some more elastic scheduling and proactive planning priorities that will serve the most customers.  Pickleball players could play primarily in the morning, basketball players after school and tennis players in the evenings, if that’s what supply/demand dictates.  Flexibility can be built in to accommodate the non-conformists at times but not dictate inefficiently to all others, all the time.  Staff may have to focus at managing this and directors may have to do a better job ‘managing by walking around’ to see that their supply chain is meeting the changing demand. This is all the management rage these days, along with teams and Zoom.

We all remember the 1775 Adam Smith free market where subsidies and disruption of the supply/demand curves lead to inefficiencies, monopolies and government intervention.  I hope that the constituents, customers, clients, shareholders, stakeholders, staff, directors, board, County Council and Managers can come together to help us live with what we have, before requesting expensive and politically unpopular remedies or renovations.  We can all collaborate for the most common good and cooperate for the peak public welfare without throwing a lot of money at it.  If we are smart, we can make-do.