LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – The City of Lubbock has put a pause on private lessons at the Burgess-Rushing Tennis Center. A supervisor said the city needs to review its policies to make sure players, coaches and taxpayers are being treated fairly.<\/p>\n
Recreation Services Superintendent Karen Penkert says the city discovered, after its recent tennis center supervisor left and during an annual review, that some coaches weren\u2019t paying court fees at all and some were charging more than $100 a lesson without any cut going to the city. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe started noticing that there were some people who were providing private lessons that were not doing so under an agreement with us,\u201d Penkert said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not that our instructors have done anything wrong but there is a point in time just for the transparency and consistency and just overall fairness that we have to take a stop and evaluate the current agreement how to get that in line with what we want the facility to be, where we want it to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
She says this year\u2019s budget for the center is about $280,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe revenue does not even come close to supporting that,\u201d Penkert said. \u201cWe are a municipal tennis center, so while we\u2019re not expecting to make a ton of money off of revenues, we would like to narrow those margins at least a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Longtime tennis pro Chris Perkins was one of those coaches who wasn\u2019t currently under an agreement.<\/p>\n
\u201c100% of them, to include myself,\u201d Perkins said. \u201cAnd that was because the director that was there, I don\u2019t know why he did it, but at one point for me specifically, we had done a 90-10 split, which was what mine was. We had done it until May of last year. And then he basically just told me, no, just have your customers pay you directly. And I argued with him and argued with him and I did that for a number of months. And finally I just, I got done with arguing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The city has now paused all private lessons while it comes up with a plan, one it said would benefit it and the coaches.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re operating under an agreement with the facility, we also benefit because we can promote it to people,\u201d Penkert said. \u201cWe get some of that revenue generation that we\u2019re not seeing right now. I\u2019m not going to say it\u2019s an astronomical amount, but it is also about protecting the players and the people who are coming out to our facility. And that\u2019s going to be the most important thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perkins says he was told Friday night he wasn\u2019t allowed to teach there anymore.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe City of Lubbock, as of right now, I don\u2019t believe has handled it the way they should,\u201d Perkins said. \u201cThey should have transitioned us and said, hey, we\u2019re looking at this. We\u2019re looking at the legality of it. we\u2019re going to come out with new contracts or new rules and then you can continue to work until then once we do, then you make a decision at that point.\u201d<\/p>\n