Advocacy at Work in Montgomery County, MD (Wheaton, MD)
Goal: To save The Wheaton Indoor Tennis Courts from proposed demolition.
Leader/Advocacy Organization: The Montgomery County Tennis Association (CTA) and Friends of Wheaton Tennis. The partnership was led by Coach Chuck Carter, past vice president of the Montgomery County Tennis Association (CTA) that was named 2006 Community Tennis Association of the Year.
Introduction: When it was proposed that The Wheaton Indoor Tennis Courts be demolished and replaced with a recreation center, the tennis community rallied support and advocated for a total renovation. Since the Montgomery County Department of Parks had no money for the project, it was a tough fight to make it happen.
The journey to success was long and challenging. Our grassroots advocacy began in 2004. It was greatly enhanced by the USTA advocacy initiative that gave us a set of principles and a roadmap. It is notable that two of the projects involved private funding, which helps politicians see the strategy as a win-win.
The tennis community and CTA leadership were effectively organized and "worked the system" to get the funding for the courts. We built an effective countywide advocacy network that fought for tennis facilities.
Infrastructure improvements tend to have a lower priority in public capital improvements programs so a fundamental shift in political thinking and priorities was achieved as a result of our advocacy work.
The Wheaton facility was the flagship initiative of our campaign. While we were able to get funding in fiscal year 2006, it took several years for two of the major initiatives to reach completion. The newly renovated Wheaton indoor facility and upgraded Olney Manor outdoor lighting were finally completed in 2009. As part of the comprehensive advocacy effort for public parks infrastructure improvements, we were able to secure over $5 million to:
- Renovate the Wheaton Indoor Facility;
- Renovate the adjacent six (6) Wheaton outdoor courts;
- Renovate the Cabin John Indoor Facility under a public-private partnership agreement;
- Upgrade lighting at the eighteen (18) court Olney Manor outdoor facility to U.S. Open standards, green fixtures, convert from fee based meters to free lighting, and privately fund the center court color coating and upgrades; and Color coat courts throughout the county to U.S. Open Blue as part of the scheduled court maintenance program.
How did we do it? As the late Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill was fond of saying, "all politics is local." We began our effort by affirming we were all we had—and all we needed—to get the Wheaton job done if we approached the matter intelligently.
Effective Advocacy Requires:
We utilized a basic, "9 questions" planning tool:
"Consider the Possibilities" was a foundation-building exercise that provided the basis for the various parties to come to the table and to agree on a viable solution: MCTA fostered creation of a separate group "independent of any one particular interest, viewpoint, or agency" to lead the parties through discussion of the above points. Five "town hall meetings" that were open to the public enabled us to reach credible conclusions acceptable to all. These meetings also allowed us to demonstrate a truly public interest in the problem.
Developing our Message: We created a five-member steering group to guide us through the translation of the goals into achievable action steps. Critical to this step is the involvement of people who are passionate about the project as well as those with specific skills that can support the initiative (website design, etc.). A thorough analysis of the economic performance of existing indoor tennis facilities proved crucial, and ultimately drove all other decisions.
One of the critical building blocks was the development and management of a very robust "friends of tennis" website during the funding approval process. We called it "fowt.org," short for the Friends of Wheaton Tennis. We kept the site current with the latest strategies and update, and posted our research and concept designs. We also used the site to poll for grassroots votes on options to be pursued.
In addition, it was used for calls for action that would generate waves of emails from the grassroots on particular issues that we encountered on the road to success. We encouraged friends to invite friends to grow the e-mail list. We also included key political and government leaders on the list to provide transparency and build alliances for our advocacy agenda.
Implementing the Plan: Our five-person steering group identified the timeline for action based on its understanding of the applicable budget cycles relevant to the desired outcome. Individual members of the steering group accepted lead responsibility for managing specific sub-sets of tasks and tactics: one person for website development and management, to keep our players informed and energized; one person to coordinate overall legislative strategy, relying on volunteers to be responsible for outreach to individual decision-makers (County Council members); one person to manage outreach to the media to assure our story got told the way we wanted it told; and one person to manage discussions by and between the disparate interest groups that made up our coalition, and make sure we all stayed "on message"; and one person for overall leadership of the effort.
Realizing Success. Being in the Right Place at the Right Time: Because we invested heavily in the time necessary to explore publicly all alternatives and reach true consensus on our goals and objectives, keeping all parties focused on the agreed upon message was relatively simple. And because we did our homework to develop a compelling economic basis for our argument, advocating for our coalition’s position was relatively straight-forward.
Being a Partner Means We Must Step Up, Too: To develop public tennis infrastructure, tennis organizations must be proactive in seeking out and courting long-term partnerships with public agencies. Being a true "partner" means we have to "step up" sometimes, too. At the same time MCTA was advocating for increased public funding of tennis infrastructure, we also were actively donating monies to the local parks department for immediate, needed improvements. MCTA’s donation of $5,000-$1,000 to purchase benches installed between courts and $4,000 towards new posts, nets and recoating six outdoor park courts in US Open blue; went a long ways toward establishing our bona fides with the Parks and Recreation staffs with whom we now regularly collaborate.
Outcome: Perhaps the most important outcome is the foundation that is laid for continuing collaboration with the parks department to make improvements and maintenance of tennis facilities a priority in capital improvement plans for the future.
These projects have had a significant impact on growing the game with juniors, seniors and USTA teams. The projects greatly increased the capacity and quality of tennis facilities. Montgomery County is now a destination for the tennis community throughout the region. The improved facilities are truly a quality of life and economic development asset.
Lesson Learned: Advocacy requires diligence beyond the announcement of the funding decision with the usual political fanfare and excitement. Crucial to the ultimate success is a strong relationship with the public parks department. The process of facility planning, design, supplemental funding and construction requires an ongoing commitment of time and resources to make the vision a reality.
It shows that "success begets success in advocacy," which is the critical message. It is not just about Wheaton, but rather that the Wheaton advocacy shifted the paradigm of how to affect changes based on positive relationship building for a comprehensive agenda.
As we evolved over a period of time we were able to advocate based on our reputation and relationships developed in the foundation building phase. Political and agency leaders knew that we had a powerful constituency that would take action and perhaps more importantly, would vote in political elections. So we could work collaboratively as time went on, and did not need to activate the tennis community to get things done based on the comprehensive plan for capital improvements.
The Wheaton Tennis advocacy paved the way to other successes around the County based on the goodwill and relationships developed with public officials, especially in the parks and recreation agency.
Contact Information:
Coach Chuck Carter
Telephone: 301-452-8498
E-mail Address: coachcicarter@yahoo.com
Pictures:
Under Renovation:
One old rusted pole and three new poles. The old lights were well beyond their life cycle for many years, and most were broken and had missing fixtures. The lights had coin meters. Very few players, mostly beginners, used the courts.
After:
The County did an outstanding job in completely renovating the Wheaton Indoor Tennis Facility into a first class tennis venue. Now with the free new lights the court usage is at capacity on most nights. Users include youth, adults, seniors, teaching pros and families&emdash;including beginners to advanced players. The transformation has been incredible!
Submitted 7/29/2009