On April 26, 2017, City Commission referred the item regarding insourcing of North Shore Tennis to the Neighborhoods and Community Affairs Committee (“NCAC”), in light of several emails that Administration and Commission received regarding the teaching professionals at North Shore Tennis Center (“the Center”).
At the May 19, 2017 NCAC meeting, the Committee moved to refer the item to the Finance and Citywide Projects Committee (“FCWPC”), and directed staff to identify potential operating models, outlining their financial implications for consideration as part of the budgeting process.
In the essence of time, a special FCWPC meeting was noticed for June 5, 2017. Following direction from NCAC, Staff identified the outsourcing of programming and instruction and the insourcing of the Center’s operations as a potential operating model (Exhibit B).
In this model, the Center’s hours of operation would be 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., 7 days a week. The City would be responsible for the front desk, reservation and software system, money collection, maintenance of courts and overall facility and other tasks or duties as needed.
Additionally, all membership and court fees would stay with City. Programming instruction would be contracted out through either Professional Service Agreements or Independent Contractor Agreements. The FCWPC directed staff to implement this model and to work with the Office of Budget and Performance Improvement to allocate funding for positions and operating expenses.
As such and so as to not interrupt current programming and instruction at the North Shore Tennis Center, Administration recommends entering into a Pilot Management Agreement with Van Daalen Tennis, LLC for a period of one year beginning August 1, 2017. After the one year pilot, the City will evaluate the performance of Van Daalen Tennis, LLC as it relates to customer satisfaction, revenue generated, program offerings and expenses incurred. It is understood that if the City is dissatisfied with the performance, revenue or programming deliverables of Van Daalen Tennis, LLC after the pilot one year program, the City will terminate the agreement and explore other options. Martin Van Daalen (principal) has been working at the North Shore Tennis Center since 2015 serving as the Director of the Miami Beach Tennis Academy. Mr. Van Daalen has many years of experience coaching players such as Pete Sampras, Mary Pierce and Jennifer Capriati. He is also the former coach of Men’s Tennis for the USTA Player Development program and is the author of Teaching Tennis Volume 1.
Furthermore, at the request of the City Commission, a draft coaching contract (Exhibit C) was provided to existing third party teaching professionals currently working at the North Shore Tennis Center by Van Daalen Tennis, LLC on July 7, 2017. It is the determination of the City that the contract offered was fair, reasonable and comparable to tennis industry standards. The third party professionals were asked to review the contract and provide a response to the City by Monday, July 10, 2017.
On July 12, 2017, the City reached out to the third party professionals requesting an update as they had not responded by the deadline. On July 13, 2017, a response was received which stated that the third party professionals were not interested because of the “exclusivity clause” in the contract. The City clarified the intent of a “non-compete” clause is to prohibit instruction that directly or indirectly competes with City contracted tennis services at City-owned tennis facilities. Teaching and instruction at City-owned neighborhood tennis courts is a violation of the City’s code. It was further explained that the “non-compete” clause does not preclude the third party pros from teaching and instructing outside of the City, at hotels, country clubs or private residences. On July 14, 2017, the third party professionals stated that they were still not interested in signing on due to sections of the contract that pertain to only being allowed to instruct at the North Shore Tennis Center.
At the time of this memo and after further contract term clarification, the City is still working to negotiate with the third party professionals with the understanding that if an agreement is not reached soon, they will have to cease operations at the North Shore Tennis Center effective August 1, 2017.