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CURRENT EFFORTS: Stop the Outdoor Pickleball Courts Project at Tucker Rec Ctr

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Concerns

Should our taxpayer monies be spent to the tune of over $3.4 million for a single sport for outsiders to play?

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Should our teens be able to have a central place to gather next to the high school, and enjoy older 'tween and teen park structures as the most comprehensive study to date has found?

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Do our Master Parks Plans (MPP) include pickleball from resident inputs or is this a special-interest project?

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Are we a community dedicated to quality of life and recreation for Tucker citizens or are we interested in becoming a regional destination for pickleball?

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Since 2022, the four pickleball courts at Rosenfeld Park have accommodated up to 12 different levels of league play. According to city staff, neighbors of Rosenfeld Park state there are no issues with noise nor parking. So why are city park & rec staff recommending a move away from this acceptable location to pave a grass field in the middle of the city into a "football field of parking" when "lack of available land for new parks" ranked in the top five concerns of Tucker Citizens in both the Master Park Plans?

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Why isn't the $3.4M going into building a new rec center or towards walk/bike/hike trails and items actually listed as top 5 priorities in the Master Parks Plans?

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Should our young city go into debt to fund all the capital projects currently listed in the budget - especially in times of economic uncertainty - or should we maintain healthy balances and help citizens losing jobs?

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When will city staff stop spending money on an idea that has no basis in what the community needs & wants are, and is only documented in a 2024 Master Parks Plan 5-Yr Update report with undeniable sampling bias?

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Why has P&R been allowed to spend over $100k in taxpayer money on narrow and flawed studies in attempts to push this project forward even after the Mayor states it is "on pause"? Who is running the city?

The City of Tucker, GA, plans to pave over a grass multi-use sports field at the Tucker Rec Center, into a parking lot and 12 pickleball courts.

The grassy multi-use sports field at TRC is used for soccer practice by Tucker high school, lacrosse league practices and camps, football practice, cheerleading practice, Rec Center camps, and two homeschool groups based out of the Rec Center three days a week each- as well as annual events like Adult Field Day.

Issues surrounding the novel noise associated with pickleball play have made headlines across the country, and in every instance of courts installed by municipalities in close proximity to residential districts they are shut down. Does Tucker want to spend $2.9M on a single-use project with the outcome likely being similar?

The specific and unique noise nuisance associated with pickleball activates the body's fight-or-flight stress response, exposure for 12 to 14 hours is linked to anxiety, depression, and cardiovascular problems. This is also known as a known public health hazard.

Additional concerns regarding this project arise from the way the city's strategic park planning documents called Master Park Plans —which have involved significant investments since 2019—appear to emphasize pickleball as a key community priority despite limited opportunities for public input. City P&R staff worked closely with the consultants that wrote these reports.

Pickleball courts do not belong in residential areas: they should be built in industrial districts where the noise does not interfere with the lives of residents. The city's current noise ordinance does not capture the novel noise nuisance of pickleball as it only became popular post COVID. Hear 8 pickleball courts in a 6-min recording.

PROJECT HISTORY - A Timeline of Events

This project originated in August 2022 with David Mills, a Decatur resident and non-Tucker local, who wrote a 12-page proposal for pickleball courts at the Tucker Rec Center's (TRC) multi-use sports field. Listed as a co-contributor is Joe Stewart, a Parks & Rec (P&R) staffer also known as "Mr. Pickleball." Stewart gave this proposal to his supervisor P&R director "Rip" Carlton Robertson, who then presented it to City Council on Oct 24, 2022, as coming "out of the blue." See video at minute 1:25:50.

On March 13, 2023, Robertson submitted a memo requesting $77,000 for a "design and engineering plan" from Root Design Studio (Roots). There was much back and forth surrounding the non-standard process of including two stages of such a huge capital project in one step. Several assurances were given by Roots and Robertson that this plan would indeed include public input. Read a transcript of that meeting here.

Council member Alexis Weaver, District 3, was the NAY vote, stating that one contract should not include both feasibility and engineering stages of a project. A deliverable of the contract with Roots included a "community input meeting" which never materialized, we'll come back to this.

On April 18, 2023, four pickleball players met with Roots to provide inputs into the design of the pickleball facilities; the names were provided by Robertson.

On June 26, 2023, a P&R memo from Robertson to the City Council states "we have completed several public meetings...sought direct feedback from the community during the last 5 years" regarding parking & pickleball at TRC. See Community Engagements Debunked. Note some of these false claims by Robertson were removed from the website at some point.

In August of 2023, Roots completed a rendered site plan.

In September of 2023, Roots completed a 40-page construction plan (90-day deliverable).

There is no City Council update by P&R director Robertson on the pickleball proposal from June 26, 2023, until a tentative agenda item for the Oct 28, 2024, meeting - to award the construction contract for the pickleball courts.

As of May 7, 2025, no formal presentation to the City Council has been made by Roots or by P&R of these plans - nor has P&R director Robertson returned an email or met with residents of Morgan Rd to discuss their concerns.

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In a related timeline of its own:

On August 14, 2023, Barge Design Solutions holds a "Master Parks Plan 5-Yr Update" community input meeting with approximately 32 people in attendance: 5 (five) inputs were for pickleball.

On Sept 1, 2023, and due to low turnout at the August input meeting, pointed out as insufficient community feedback at a council meeting by Council member Weaver, Barge holds a "pop up" event where pickleball received 11 random inputs: random because according to the City Clerk there is no sign-in sheet of this "pop up" held for concertgoers at a Jimmy Buffet cover band show.

On August 12, 2024, Council approves the Master Parks Plan 5-Yr Update.

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On August 24, 2024, District 2 Council member Vinh Nguyen posts to social media "We will start construction on 12 dedicated courts soon at Tucker recreation center." Nguyen has stated at several council meetings he is an avid pickleball player, playing often in Midtown Atlanta leagues.

On September 10, 2024, the city released the invitation to bid for construction of a 12-court pickleball complex at TRC; five responses were received with the lowest bid at $2.6 million. After several inquiries to the city for clarification on the approval process for invitations to bid, it is still unclear who wrote the 35-page document or how any bid is released - other than the requirement of it being "in the budget".

The October 28, 2024, tentative agenda for City Council contained a vote to award the construction contract for this project.

On or about October 9, 2024, abutting neighbors (sharing a property line) were made aware of the project for the first time in its two-year history as no public input occurred during the planning process. The notification came from Morgan Rd's District 3 City Council representative, Alexis Weaver. Understandably, the neighbors organized to stop the vote that would place pickleball play at 30 ft from some backyards.

On or about October 26, 2024, an unknown P&R staffer circulated a highly skewed online survey on social media and via e-mail to the pickleball community, to help shore up community support for pickleball as it did not exist in any city-sanctioned study.

Since the tentative council agenda item in October 2024, a vote on awarding pickleball construction has not been reintroduced until May 6, 2025 by P&R Director Robertson.

The initial outcry and media coverage pushed the construction award vote from Oct 28, 2024, to Dec 9, 2024, and then the vote was removed from the city agenda altogether.

On November 7, 2024, Mayor Auman hosted a public listening session where he stated the pickleball project at TRC was "on pause" and "off the rails." Either the Mayor did not know, or did not want to share that the City Manager John McHenry signed the Arpeggio sound study contract on October 28, 2024, which began on 11/13/24. This sound study was not mentioned at the November 7, 2024, "town hall" meeting.

The only reason a "pause" was announced was due to the before mentioned and missing contractual obligation of Roots to the city, for the deliverable of a "community input meeting" which was not fulfilled at feasibility stage back in April of 2023 [when the four pickleball players were consulted on design].

No community inputs for design of the space were given at the Nov 7, 2024, therefore that meeting did not fulfill the contract. Yet in the upcoming May 12, 2025, council meeting agenda, a "new" design is being proposed with the same 12 court count by P&R director Robertson who falsely claims the Nov 7 community inputs were taken into consideration.

At the Nov 7 meeting, the public was allotted a total of 40 minutes to speak, in 2-minute increments each, at the microphone. None were allowed to speak longer - a stark contrast to the lax enforcement of the 2-min time limit given to pickleball supporters at council meetings.

This has only ever been a pickleball project.

Nov 7, 2024, was not a formal presentation to City Council. See the Roots presentation at the public listening session.

In the January 27, 2025, council meeting, two presentations were introduced by Robertson: a site study and a noise impact assessment. The memo in the agenda from Robertson states these studies were a result of the November 7, 2024, public listening session even though the noise impact assessment contract was signed by the City Manager John McHenry on October 28, 2024.

The flawed "noise impact assessment" focuses solely on decibels and fails to account for the disruptive and chaotic nature of pickleball noise —such as the 900 sharp 'pops' produced hourly by a single court— and its potential effects on human well-being and psyche. Twelve courts = 10,800 pops per hour, a day of play can easily span from 8am to 9pm and produce over 118,000 chaotic "pops". Listen to a 6-minute recording of 8 courts.

In the February 24, 2025, council meeting, Robertson presented to Council yet declined to answer specifics on anticipated facility hours. In an unprecedented 27-minute speech from District 3 Council member Amy Trocchi, Morgan Rd residents were addressed, first with an apology for staff's mistake of not holding an input meeting and then stating "when you buy a home, you need to do research on your own lot & lots that surround you," before then requesting P&R consider alternate sites, again (alternate sites were already studied - very narrowly). Trocchi also highly praised P&R for updating parks after the city's takeover from Dekalb County and praised pickleball players as "involved in city events and participat[ing] fully in city events and activities, you bridge divides instead of creating them."

An additional $25,010 has been spent by Robertson from the P&R operational budget after the Roots design was completed with study after study after study at the END of the process when it should been front-ended at feasibility stage to determine whether this was a feasible, cost-effective, and suitable location. Will the spending ever stop?

In related news, the city council approved increasing city staff credit card purchasing limits to $50,000 recently; has included in the budget a proposed promotion of staffer Joe Stewart aka "Mr. Pickleball" who came up with this plan with zero community inputs [other than the pickleball contingent]; and posturing by Mayor Auman points to a promotion of Robertson, a close friend.

What the $25,010 does not include are

🔵the $77,000 spent on the Roots Design contract,

🔵the $11,660 spent for GA DOT-required driveway re-engineering,

🔵the $157,000 spent on the 2019 Master Parks Plan, a 123-page report, reflecting comprehensive community feedback from nearly 500 residents, fully disregarded as pickleball is not a Tucker community priority, nor

🔵The $125,000 spent on the 2024 Master Parks Plan 5-Year Update which resulted in a 93-page report with minimal community engagement—exactly one community meeting with 32 Tucker residents —and relied heavily (17 pgs) on national trends analysis from a national recreation organization.

Pickleball was prominently featured in the executive summary infographic on pages 7-8, suggesting resident consensus despite limited input.
11 of the 16 inputs for pickleball cannot be verified as no sign-in sheet exists for the "pop up" event where the majority of this data was collected, p61.
And last but certainly not least, pickleball was listed as "currently underway" under Short Term Recommendations (1-3 yrs) p88 prior to the invitation to bid was released in September 2024, before any formal City Council presentation, without a vote for construction award, and without any neighbor notification as is required of any businesses planning construction in Tucker.

Both Master Parks Plans were adopted unanimously by City Council as the strategy forward, for P&R to follow as the guide for expanding the city's infrastructure based on local resident inputs. It is the P&R strategy document.

Yet here we are, with zero abutting neighbor involvement in the planning of a 12-court development in a dense residential neighborhood, 30 ft from backyards. To date, Robertson has not meet with Morgan Rd residents.

Meanshile the TRC pickleball league players continue to play on the four courts at Rosenfeld Park (since 2022); some driving in from Eatonton, McDonough and Cumming.

The proposed 12-court development will never have enough parking as 12 courts = 48 players, with the self-proclaimed "cult-like" community staying after & coming before play, which could top 68 cars at TRC.

Morgan Rd and nearby streets will be overrun with parking issues.

9-1-1 will be called to settle noise disputes between players and neighbors.

The character of the neighborhood will change.

The noise pollution will destroy the peace and quiet of all within 600 feet which not only includes residents but walkers, kids at play on the playground, and those playing basketball outdoors at TRC.

See May 12, 2025 Agenda pages 15 and 156. EDIT: agenda was revised on 5/9/25, and the two construction contract votes for this project were removed.

After, the May 12, 2025 City Council meeting had begun, a press release was issued by City Manager John McHenry stating no existing contracts would be used for pickleball as the city failed its due diligence on the review of applications, accepting a contractor's bid that was not properly licensed in the state of Georgia for the work outlined in the RFP.

Voices for Balance remains committed to championing park space preservation and fostering open, transparent dialogue based on facts.

Proposed pickleball complex overlay

Radius of possible pickleball noise nuisance

"Pickleball has a highly impulsive noise, with each court generating about 900 pop noises per hour," said Leahy.

"It's incompatible with residential living. Cities can locate pickleball in industrial and commercial neighborhoods rather than close to homes; best recommendation is to build courts far from homes, at least 600–800 feet away to allow the sound to naturally dissipate.

- Charles Leahy, attorney, retired mechanical engineer,

As quoted in "Pickleball courts in a legal pickle over the associated noise," by the Acoustical Society of America