Tennis players on Mayne Island will have to share courts with pickleball players after a judge ruled the Mayne Island Community Centre Society has authority over how its tennis courts are used.
On June 30, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Jasvinder Basran dismissed a petition by a group of Mayne Island tennis players asking for exclusive use of two tennis courts. The group was instrumental in fundraising and building the two courts on land owned by the community centre society.
Court heard that in the fall of 2021, members of the Mayne Island Pickleball Club asked the community centre society for access to its tennis courts to play pickleball.
Their request was refused.
At the society’s next annual meeting in November 2021, five new members — including three members of the Mayne Island Pickleball Club — were elected to the six-member board.
In April 2022, the community centre society created a courts committee to provide advice to the board on how the tennis courts should be used.
On May 1, 2022, the board announced that pickleball could be played on the tennis courts 21 hours per week. The Mayne Island Tennis Association was also allocated 21 hours a week. It could reserve 12 hours a week and the rest of the time was available for public tennis.
“The effect of this decision was to reduce public tennis access by 30 hours per week,” Basran wrote in his decision.
During the three-day hearing, the tennis players argued that based on a 2007 written agreement with the society, the tennis association should decide how the tennis courts are used.
They said the association’s role in building and maintaining the courts over the past 14 years entitled it to retain control of the tennis court. They also argued that some of the new members of the board of directors were in a conflict of interest because of their expressed interest in pickleball.
The society countered that its elected members of the board of directors should decide how the tennis courts are used. Directors elected in 2021 are entitled to make decisions on the use of all community centre property, including the tennis courts, it said. The community centre society also said it wants to serve the interests of all Mayne islanders, including those who play pickleball.
The society said it was entitled to set a policy balancing the interest of tennis and pickleball players without excluding either group from the facility.
The judge found that the evidence clearly established that the Mayne Island Community Centre Society is the registered owner of the land and owns the tennis courts.
The 2007 agreement reflected an understanding that the tennis association was to operate under the auspices of the society to raise funds to construct and maintain the tennis courts, wrote Basran.
Although the tennis association was originally empowered to set policy for use of the tennis courts, this was subject to final approval of the community centre society “which would take into account the interests of other community users of its facilities,” Basran found.
“In 2021, the MICCS board declined to provide pickleball players with access to the tennis courts. In response, pickleball supporters elected a slate of directors to the MICCS board who supported their desire to play pickleball on the tennis courts,” the judge wrote.
He rejected the argument that the newly elected board members were in a conflict of interest by giving access to the tennis courts to pickleball players.
“They were in no more a conflict of interest than previous board members who preferred tennis. … The directors of the MICCS are empowered to determine what sports are played on the tennis courts,” he wrote.
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