Pickleball row may be over after Oakmont election installs a new board

The score just changed in the protracted, hard-fought pickleball contest in Oakmont. It appears that a barely begun project to build four centrally located play courts will soon be terminated.

A vote tally Tuesday revealed that a slate of three foes of the pickleball project were elected to the board of the homeowners’ association that governs the east Santa Rosa retirement community.

Those three - Ken Heyman, Carolyn Bettencourt and Greg Goodwin - took their seats at a meeting Tuesday afternoon and elected as the board’s new president Ellen Leznik. Leznik was elected to the Oakmont Village Association board a year ago and has been a consistent critic of the at-least $310,000 project to build four pickleball courts at the community’s largest recreation and gathering center.

“I don’t think this is going to be an easy year for the board,” Leznik told the Oakmont residents at the OVA meeting minutes into her term as president.

Asked afterward if she expects the newly constituted board to act soon to halt the construction work on a pickleball complex that began Monday, she replied, “Very soon.”

A dispirited Andie Altman, whose term as board president ended Tuesday, said it does appear that a four-year pursuit of a pickleball complex alongside the Berger Center will be shut down by the new OVA board majority.

“It’s disappointing,” Altman said, “but if that’s what the board votes to do, that’s what gets done.”

“It’s behind us,” she added. “Time to move on.”

The board will take up the issue of the pickleball project at its April 18 meeting, barring any attempt to act sooner to halt the heavy-equipment work that began Monday to prepare a former putting green for development into what are essentially reduced-size tennis courts.

The newly elected board members said they are aware that there will be costs involved in terminating the construction contract and undoing the site work that’s been done. They said those costs could have been avoided had the former OVA board majority complied with a request to delay the start of construction until after the election.

New board president Leznik said following Tuesday’s session that though a community battle over pickleball courts sounds silly or petty, it is anything but.

She said the homeowners’ board has an obligation to spend association dollars wisely for many reasons, one being to protect Oakmont residents who struggle to pay their bills from dues increases.

“We have limited resources,” she said of the homeowners’ association. “We have to be very fiscally responsible.”

Leznik said that to complete the construction of view-blocking pickleball courts near the Berger Center would squander dollars on something non-essential when there are basic needs at OVA facilities that need to be addressed.

Leznik insisted, as have others opposed to the project now underway, that Oakmont can create pickleball courts inexpensively by converting some of the existing tennis courts at the two satellite community centers.