Serve Ventura - Fix Our Courts. Fund the Plan. Set a Date.

Take Action

Make Them Answer For It

Polite emails get polite non-answers. Pressure gets results. Every action below makes it harder for the Council to keep ignoring this.

✍

Put Your Name On It

Every name on this list is a voter the Council has to face. 30 seconds of your time. Five years of their inaction. Do the math.

✉

Email All 7 Council Members — One Click

This opens your email with all seven council inboxes pre-loaded and a draft ready to send. Councilmember Bill McReynolds represents District 5 where Camino Real sits — he should be hearing from you the most.

Send the Email. All 7 Inboxes. →

🏛

Show Up — In Person or on Zoom

City Council meets Tuesday, May 6 at 5:00 PM. You get 3 minutes of public comment. Can't make it in person? Join on Zoom from your couch. Use the "raise hand" button to speak. No excuses.

Tuesday, May 6, 2026 at 5:00 PM

In person: Ventura City Hall, 501 Poli St

By phone: 1-669-900-6833 | Meeting ID: 840 9556 9075 | Press *9 to speak

Join on Zoom →

📷

Share This. Make It Louder.

Send this to every tennis player, pickleball player, parent, and taxpayer you know in Ventura. The City is banking on you not caring enough to share. Prove them wrong.

Copy Link to Share →

Why This Matters More Than You Think

"It's a Country Club Sport" — That's the Excuse. Here Are the Facts.

40%

of U.S. tennis players are people of color

+90%

Hispanic participation growth in 3 years

+46%

Black participation growth in 3 years

<$100

total cost to start playing on public courts

+9.7 yrs

life expectancy from tennis — more than any other sport

Tennis adds nearly a decade to your life — more than jogging, swimming, cycling, or any other sport studied. That's not an opinion. That's a 25-year study of 8,577 adults published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

By closing these courts with no plan to rebuild, the City is cutting residents off from the single most life-extending form of exercise that exists.

Venus and Serena Williams learned on public courts in Compton. Arthur Ashe learned on public courts in Richmond. Tennis on public courts is one of the most accessible, affordable sports in America — a racket costs $50, a can of balls costs $4, and the court is free. But only if the city bothers to maintain it.

When Ventura closes its public courts with no plan to rebuild, the people who can afford a private club drive to one. The families, the seniors, the kids who were in lesson programs? They lose access entirely.

Meanwhile, the baseball fields at Camino Real are meticulously maintained. The basketball court was just resurfaced. Same park. Same City budget. Only the tennis courts were left to rot.

This is an equity issue — and the City is failing the people who need public courts the most.

Sources: USTA 2025 U.S. Tennis Participation Report • Copenhagen City Heart Study, Mayo Clinic Proceedings 2018

So What Did the City Actually Take Away?

The Research Is Clear: Tennis Changes Kids' Lives

Better Grades, Better Behavior

Tennis players outscore most other athletes and all non-athletes on education and behavior measures. Lower suspension rates. Higher engagement.

Women's Sports Foundation (ERIC ED598617)

Less Crime, More Community

Sport-based programs measurably reduce juvenile delinquency. The United Nations formally recognizes sport as a crime prevention tool.

Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 2016; UNODC

Character You Can't Teach in a Classroom

Tennis is self-officiated. Players make their own line calls. That builds honesty, accountability, and resilience in ways no classroom can.

Women's Sports Foundation; USTA

9.7 More Years of Life

Tennis adds 9.7 years of life expectancy. More than jogging (3.2), swimming (3.4), or cycling (3.7). Start kids early and the benefits compound for a lifetime.

Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2018

Mental Health Protection

90 minutes a week for 13 weeks significantly reduced depression and anxiety. For kids in crisis, accessible recreation is preventive medicine.

Frontiers in Psychology, 2025

170,000 Kids Served Nationally

Arthur Ashe's NJTL program serves 170,000+ young people through 270+ nonprofits — free tennis, academic support, mentorship. Ventura's kids can't access any of it without courts.

USTA Foundation, 2024

Families showed up for lessons at Camino Real and found locked gates. No notice. No alternative. The City didn't just close courts — it cut off access to one of the most researched, most beneficial youth development tools in sports.

Now you know what's at stake. Here's how it happened. ↓

How Did We Get Here?

Five Years of Knowing. Zero Dollars Committed.

The City's own engineers said it in 2021: no rebar, no concrete — just thick asphalt. The Ventura Tennis Club called it "a stain on the City's reputation" in January 2022. The City's response since then? Not a single dollar committed.

Camino Real Park tennis courts — City of Ventura WARNING DO NOT ENTER sign on cracked, closed courts

Camino Real Park -- A Civic Embarrassment

No rebar. Not even real concrete -- just thick asphalt pretending to be a court surface. Cracks so deep weeds grow through them. 8 courts -- 80 percent of the city's entire public tennis infrastructure -- rotting in plain sight while Oxnard, Camarillo, and Thousand Oaks all have courts people can actually play on.

Well-maintained public tennis court with players actively using the facility

What Competent Cities Look Like

Oxnard spent $1.4M and finished in 2024. Thousand Oaks resurfaced and added LED lighting in 2023. Camarillo maintains beautiful courts at multiple parks. Santa Barbara invests continuously. Ventura? Ventura files grant applications that get denied and calls it a plan.

Your Neighbors Invested. Ventura Didn't.

Every city within 30 miles of Ventura has funded, built, or actively maintained their public courts. Ventura is the only one sitting on its hands. This isn't bad luck. It's a choice.

City	Distance	Investment	Status
Oxnard	10 miles	$1.4M court renovation	Completed Feb 2024
Thousand Oaks	20 miles	Multi-court resurfacing + LED lighting	Completed 2023
Santa Barbara	30 miles	Municipal Tennis Center upgrades	Ongoing investment
Camarillo	15 miles	Multiple park court renovations	Courts maintained & playable
Ventura	--	$8.4M project, $0 funded	No plan. No timeline.

$8.4M

City's own rebuild estimate (CIP PM04-1019) -- unfunded

<45%

Chance the City's only funding "plan" actually works

0

Backup plans. Contingencies. Alternatives. Zero.

🚨

A player was carried out on a stretcher after falling on the cracked surface

$2M

Formal funding request sent to every City official -- response: silence

People Got Hurt. The City Still Has No Plan.

Players have been injured on these courts for years — one was carried out on a stretcher. The City's response wasn't to fund repairs. It was to close the gates and walk away with no plan, no timeline, and no funding. When a 20-year USTA member sent a formal $2M funding request to every City official — Parks Director, City Manager, City Clerk, all seven Council members — the response was silence.

Here's What We Want

Three Asks. That's It.

We're not asking for the moon. We're asking for the bare minimum that every neighboring city already provides.

1

Phase the Rebuild

Stop hiding behind the $8.4M price tag. Phase it. Start with the 8 tennis courts — $3-4M for Phase 1. Oxnard did their entire renovation for $1.4M.

2

Fund It

The LWCF grant was denied in 2023. Less than 45% chance next round. That's a lottery ticket, not a plan. General fund, USTA grants, state programs — pick one or pick all of them.

3

Set a Date

"We're working on it" is not a timeline. It's what you say when you're not working on it. Give residents a hard deadline on the public record.

About This Campaign

Who We Are

We're parents, players, taxpayers, and voters. We watched 80% of our city's public tennis infrastructure rot for five years while the City's entire "strategy" was a grant application that already got denied.

We tried being polite. Five years of polite got us nothing. So now we're being loud, specific, and naming names.

This is political because the City made it political. When you know for five years that a facility is built on asphalt with no rebar, and you commit zero dollars — that's not a maintenance issue. It's a policy failure. Policy failures have names attached to them.

Every claim on this site is sourced from the City's own documents: the 2021 JL Skye Condition Assessment, the CIP (Project PM04-1019), and LWCF grant records. The facts are damning enough on their own.

The City Knew. They Did Nothing.