TO: THE SANTA MONICA PARKS AND RECREATION COMMISSION
We, the undersigned, are regular players on the Santa Monica beach volleyball courts south of the pier at Ocean Park. Some of us have been playing here for decades. Many of us are tax paying, Santa Monica residents. With the rise in popularity of beach volleyball and the addition of numerous private, for profit, tournaments, classes, and leagues that block out large numbers of courts, weekend use at Ocean Park has dramatically increased. For decades, the commonly accepted rule of access to the courts has been “first come, first served.” If you get to the court and it is unoccupied, it is your court. This democratic and simple system has worked well. Until now.
Unfortunately, the City has ignored its own guidelines and transformed access to the courts into “Pay for Play” by drastically increasing the amount of permits sold to private, for-profit companies. Courts are primarily being leased for weekends and deprive ordinary citizens access to the courts when they are in highest demand. Permit holders now regularly remove up to 90% of local players from courts to run their for-profit businesses.
We feel that the beach should not be for sale at the cost of depriving regular beachgoers (usually Santa Monica residents) access to recreational facilities. Accordingly, we ask The Parks and Recreation Commission to draft and enforce the following clear and defined limits on the leasing of public beach volleyball courts for tournaments, leagues, and classes and rules of access to courts:
1. Update City guidelines (a) to clearly define a general rule that no more than 20% of courts in Ocean Park may be issued permits at any given time to leagues, classes, etc., (b) no more than once per month may a tournament be issued permits and in no case may it take up more than 30% of the Ocean Park courts; (c) require permittees post their permits on each permitted court at least 72 hours before their permitted use & have a printed version of their permit with them at all times, and (d) total weekend courts permitted in Ocean Park in any given month cannot exceed permits issued for Tournament or Sorrento Beaches.
2. Require the City to follow its own guidelines that state (a) "In the Ocean Park areas, weekend league permits will not coincide with previously issued tournament permits … allowing more courts to be left open for first-come, first-served players.”, (b) "Tournaments and competitions in areas other than Tournament Beach should have a preexisting history at the area requested." [back dated to when the guidelines were drafted and not grandfather in tournaments that have been improperly permitted since then], and (c) that permit requests should “be rejected when requested dates, times, court quantity or court locations would be detrimental to public court use."
3. Order the City to create a new “summer plan” whereby tournament and league fees are increased by $X/day per court and that money is earmarked to pay for Y number of temporary courts to be installed each summer which can shall be the primary permitted courts.
4. Publish online & post on the nets what the rules are for claiming and holding courts. Historically, the rule has been “first come, first served” but a clearer definition is needed of what that means and those rules need to be published somewhere that the community can easily reference.
Respectfully submitted…