Accountability Campaign

The City Knew. They Did Nothing.

80% of Ventura's public tennis courts are closed. The City has known since 2021. They've committed $0 to fix it. The slab has no rebar and isn't even real concrete. Five years of "we're working on it." We're done waiting.

Demand Accountability → See the Receipts

8 of 10

Public courts closed

5 Years

City has known

Committed funding

The Problem

Five Years of Knowing. Zero Dollars Committed.

In 2021, the City hired JL Skye Engineering to assess Camino Real Park. The engineer's finding: "The slab is not even concrete. It is just thick asphalt!" and "no rebar." The Ventura Tennis Club called it "a stain on the City's reputation" in January 2022. The City's response since then? Nothing. Not a single dollar committed.

Camino Real Park tennis courts — City of Ventura WARNING DO NOT ENTER sign on cracked, closed courts

Camino Real Park -- A Civic Embarrassment

No rebar. Not even real concrete -- just thick asphalt pretending to be a court surface. Cracks so deep weeds grow through them. 8 courts -- 80 percent of the city's entire public tennis infrastructure -- rotting in plain sight while Oxnard, Camarillo, and Thousand Oaks all have courts people can actually play on.

Well-maintained public tennis court with players actively using the facility

What Competent Cities Look Like

Oxnard spent $1.4M and finished in 2024. Thousand Oaks resurfaced and added LED lighting in 2023. Camarillo maintains beautiful courts at multiple parks. Santa Barbara invests continuously. Ventura? Ventura files grant applications that get denied and calls it a plan.

Your Neighbors Invested. Ventura Didn't.

Every city within 30 miles of Ventura has funded, built, or actively maintained their public courts. Ventura is the only one sitting on its hands. This isn't bad luck. It's a choice.

City	Distance	Investment	Status
Oxnard	10 miles	$1.4M court renovation	Completed Feb 2024
Thousand Oaks	20 miles	Multi-court resurfacing + LED lighting	Completed 2023
Santa Barbara	30 miles	Municipal Tennis Center upgrades	Ongoing investment
Camarillo	15 miles	Multiple park court renovations	Courts maintained & playable
Ventura	--	$8.4M project, $0 funded	No plan. No timeline.

$8.4M

City's own rebuild estimate (CIP PM04-1019) -- unfunded

<45%

Chance the City's only funding "plan" actually works

Backup plans. Contingencies. Alternatives. Zero.

What We're Asking

Three Asks. That's It.

We're not asking for the moon. We're asking for the bare minimum that every neighboring city already provides. The fact that we have to campaign for this is the problem.

Phase the Rebuild

Stop hiding behind the $8.4M price tag like it's an excuse. Phase it. Start with the 8 tennis courts. $3-4M for Phase 1. Oxnard did their entire renovation for $1.4M. This is not complicated -- it just requires someone to actually do their job.

Fund It

The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) grant was denied in 2023. The City's own assessment gives it less than a 45 percent chance next round. That's not a funding strategy -- that's a lottery ticket. General fund, USTA grants, state recreation programs -- there are real options. Pick one. Or pick all of them. Just stop pretending a coin-flip grant is a plan.

Set a Date

"We're working on it" is not a timeline. It's what you say when you're not working on it. Five years of nothing earns you zero credibility. Give residents a hard deadline, put it on the public record, and be held to it. That's how accountability works.

Take Action

Make Them Answer For It

Polite emails get polite non-answers. Pressure gets results. Every action below makes it harder for the Council to keep ignoring this.

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Put Your Name On It

Every name on this list is a voter the Council has to face. 30 seconds of your time. Five years of their inaction. Do the math.

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Email All 7 Council Members — One Click

This opens your email with all seven council inboxes pre-loaded and a draft ready to send. Councilmember Bill McReynolds represents District 5 where Camino Real sits — he should be hearing from you the most.

Send the Email. All 7 Inboxes. →

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Show Up. Be Counted.

City Council meets the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays at 5:00 PM. You get 3 minutes of public comment. Use them. It's a lot harder to ignore a room full of angry residents than an inbox full of emails.

Next meeting: Tuesday, May 6, 2026 at 5:00 PM

Ventura City Hall, 501 Poli St, Ventura

Meeting Details →

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Share This. Make It Louder.

Send this to every tennis player, pickleball player, parent, and taxpayer you know in Ventura. The City is banking on you not caring enough to share. Prove them wrong.

Copy Link to Share →

About This Campaign

Who We Are

Serve Ventura is a grassroots campaign run by Ventura residents who are tired of being told to wait. We're parents, players, taxpayers, and voters who have watched 80 percent of our city's public tennis infrastructure rot while the City's entire "strategy" is a grant application that already got denied once and has less than a 45 percent chance of working next time.

We tried being polite. Five years of polite got us nothing. No funding. No timeline. No accountability. So now we're being loud, we're being specific, and we're naming names. Every Council member who votes to kick this can down the road again will hear from us -- at meetings, in their inboxes, and at the ballot box.

This is political because the City made it political. When you know for five years that a public facility is built on asphalt with no rebar, and you commit zero dollars to fix it, that's not a maintenance issue -- it's a policy failure. And policy failures have names attached to them.

Every claim on this site is sourced from the City's own documents: the 2021 JL Skye Condition Assessment, the Capital Improvement Program (CIP Project PM04-1019), and LWCF grant records. We don't need to exaggerate. The facts are damning enough on their own.