The City of Lubbock has officially pressed pause on all private lessons at the Burgess-Rushing Tennis Center. Why? Because during a rare and terrifying display of basic accounting—triggered by a center supervisor jumping ship—city officials suddenly realized they were bleeding cash. It turns out the tennis center is burning through a $280,000 annual budget while letting independent coaches use the public facilities entirely rent-free.
According to Recreation Services Superintendent Karen Penkert, the city just “started noticing” that multiple instructors were running lucrative private businesses on taxpayer-funded courts without any legal agreements or city cuts. Some pros were pocketing upwards of $100 an hour, leaving the city to generously foot the bill for court maintenance and electricity. Penkert noted that while they don’t expect a municipal center to be a cash cow, they would at least like to “narrow those margins.” Translating from bureaucracy to English: they’d prefer the deficit not look like a crater.
The best part of this bureaucratic comedy is the defense from longtime local tennis pro Chris Perkins. Perkins claims he actually argued with the previous director for months, practically begging to hand over the city’s standard 10% cut. But the director allegedly told him to just have customers pay him directly. Perkins says he eventually “got done with arguing” and reluctantly accepted the grueling burden of keeping 100% of his profits.
Naturally, instead of quietly drafting new contracts behind the scenes like a normal government entity, the city did the most Lubbock thing possible: they abruptly banned all private instruction via a Friday night notice. Now, coaches are out of work, players are out of lessons, and the city is desperately hunting for a new coordinator who possesses the advanced, mythical skill of “knowing how to collect money.”
But hey, look on the bright side: at least our tax dollars are successfully funding a masterclass in how not to run a lemonade stand, let alone a municipal sports complex.
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