City of Lubbock pauses private tennis lessons at Burgess-Rushing Tennis Center

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.

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’t paying court fees at all and some were charging more than $100 a lesson without any cut going to the city.

“We started noticing that there were some people who were providing private lessons that were not doing so under an agreement with us,” Penkert said. “And it’s 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.”

She says this year’s budget for the center is about $280,000.

“The revenue does not even come close to supporting that,” Penkert said. “We are a municipal tennis center, so while we’re not expecting to make a ton of money off of revenues, we would like to narrow those margins at least a little bit.”

Longtime tennis pro Chris Perkins was one of those coaches who wasn’t currently under an agreement.

“100% of them, to include myself,” Perkins said. “And that was because the director that was there, I don’t 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.”

The city has now paused all private lessons while it comes up with a plan, one it said would benefit it and the coaches.

“When you’re operating under an agreement with the facility, we also benefit because we can promote it to people,” Penkert said. “We get some of that revenue generation that we’re not seeing right now. I’m not going to say it’s an astronomical amount, but it is also about protecting the players and the people who are coming out to our facility. And that’s going to be the most important thing.”

Perkins says he was told Friday night he wasn’t allowed to teach there anymore.

“The City of Lubbock, as of right now, I don’t believe has handled it the way they should,” Perkins said. “They should have transitioned us and said, hey, we’re looking at this. We’re looking at the legality of it. we’re 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.”

The city is looking to find another assistant recreation coordinator who would oversee recreation programs and the Burgess-Rushing Tennis Center. Perkins suggested hiring someone to focus solely on the tennis center.

“If the city’s losing money on a facility like that, it’s ridiculous and the taxpayers are paying for it,” Perkins said. “So they need to hire somebody that actually knows what they’re doing to run it and to make it profitable.”

Penkert said she isn’t sure how long the pause on private lessons will last.