Walker Township at odds over proposed pickleball courts and priorities

Proposed pickleball courts in Walker Township have led to a debate between residents, the township’s parks and recreation board members and the supervisors who recently rejected a bid to construct courts for the popular sport.

The Walker Township Supervisors held an hour-and-a-half discussion about the potential construction of regulation pickleball courts at their meeting Wednesday. It followed a June meeting where the supervisors voted 2-1 to reject a roughly $120,000 bid for the courts’ construction. Supervisors Zane Sherman and James Heckman voted against the bid, with Keith Harter in support.

The courts would be built at Walker Township Park using funding from the parks and recreation board’s open space fee-in-lieu account, which receives $2,500 each time a new development is built in the township. The account has about $251,000 in it, which can only be used for parks and recreation-related purchases.

The park currently has pickleball court lines taped onto its tennis courts that township parks and recreation board member Deb Zimmerman said “always come up.”

Walker Township sought bids for the courts’ construction in early June. The courts would be located on a flat plot of land next to the southern corner of the park’s parking lot, and the project was estimated to cost around $60,000 — a figure that doubled when it was revealed that the lone bidder hadn’t factored in prevailing wages. If the bid was accepted, the courts were set to be built later this year.

”We just feel that there is a real need within the community for something for the older generation, but again, it’s also not exclusive to the just older generation,” resident Sinéad Gallagher said during the meeting. “If we had proper amenities, like a proper pickleball court or courts, I think it would be a fantastic addition to Walker Township.”

Gallagher, along with three other residents and parks and recreation board members Cindy Kunes and Zimmerman, cited a lack of local pickleball courts, overcrowding at existing courts, potential usage by residents from neighboring municipalities and a 136-signature petition as reasons to construct the court.

“We need some wins here in parks and rec,” Kunes said.

But Sherman said that he opposes the courts’ construction for financial reasons, saying that he wants to see the parks and recreation board use the open space fee-in-lieu account pay for more upkeep with the park overall, as opposed to certain costs coming from the township’s general fund.

He added that he would like to paint pickleball court lines and use transportable nets on the park’s basketball court as a temporary fix, making it a dual-use court, while the supervisors and parks and recreation board jointly work to update the township’s park master plan to seek grant funding for the courts. The plan was created in 2008, and hasn’t been updated since.

“That plan is one of the criteria that the state uses when we try to get grant money for anything related to the park, so I would like to pump the brakes on the pickleball expansion, take a look at our resources financially and work with [the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources],” Sherman said. “I would like to update our master site plan to get a better perspective on what the residents in the township desire today.”

He also argued that other things in the park should be considered a higher priority, including repairs to some of the park’s fences, and the resealing of the blacktop on its basketball and tennis courts.

While the residents and parks and recreation board members didn’t disagree with an eventual update of the master plan, and that certain repairs in the park needed to be made, Sherman estimated that the update would be completed in 2028 or 2029 — a timeline that those in favor of the court’s construction thought was too long.

Heckman added that he voted against accepting the bid for similar reasons as Sherman. He said that he wanted to see the needs all the township’s residents first, and that he would like to “put Walker Township residents first,” as opposed to constructing something that’d be used by other municipalities’ residents too.

But those in support of the pickleball courts said the park’s pavilions, soccer fields, baseball fields and other amenities are already being used in leagues by residents from across Centre County.

“When you build community parks, you don’t build them for the residents of just the community who lives there, you build them for the greater good,” Kunes said. “When we build and enhance our parks in Walker Township, just like Talleyrand Park [in Bellefonte], or any other example, you want to be able to attract people to your township because it speaks volumes for what the township residents and leadership values and provides for the residents in the broader community.”

The discussion also led to a debate on whether the memorandum of understanding between the township and its parks and recreation board should be updated to further flesh out the board’s financial responsibilities, although no solution was landed upon Wednesday.

A potential decision on whether to let the board re-issue a request for bids for the courts was tabled to the supervisors’ next meeting at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 5.