How the $500k pickleball project became $1.5m without additional value

At tomorrow night's Council meeting (January 9, 2023) Council will be asked to vote to place the updated pickleball plan/design out to bid which now has an estimated total project cost of around $1.5m. This is the project to build six new pickleball courts was first pitched to Council on 8-8-22 as a project with an estimated total project cost of around $500k. Seven weeks later, this original $500k plan increased to $1.2m when the decision to build a new community garden, 120 feet from its current location, was added into the project. Then last week we learned the estimated total project costs have increased again and are now at $1.5m.

This video explains everything you need to know about the original $500k project and the new $1.5m project so you can judge for themselves if the new project provides value to justify the additional $1m it costs.

Council can vote against putting this new $1.5m plan out to bid and request that the Mayor ask us to put the original $500k out to bid instead. Then the ball is in his court. I doubt this will happen but since I expect some Councilmembers might attempt to justify their vote by claiming I am misleading people or there is more to the plan I am not telling the public about, don't let them off the hook and ask them what is untrue or left out of this video, and I don't think they will be able to provide an answer that satisfies you

Quick update with one thing someone just pointed out I forgot to include in the video. The City has claimed that the new Community Garden will be ADA accessible and that the current one isn't. Everyone who attended the 9.28.22 committee meeting, or watched the video of it, knows this isn't true. In that meeting, the guy from GPD was asked if the walkway at the new community gardens would be wider than the walkways at current location. He said they would be the same 4 feet width, which is a full foot wider than the ADA 36 inch requirement.

(Full disclosure, I only had about 2 hours to put this video together, I am not a video editor, I don't have a studio, and almost everything was done with one take so please ignore the flaws and watch for content).