Jane MusgraveLet’s Play Tennis takes the set but tennis pro Skip Jackson could still win the match point in court.
When West Palm Beach city commissioners last week reversed course and picked upstart Let’s Play Tennis instead of USTA Florida to run the city’s three tennis centers, they signaled they had put an end to a 3-month-old controversy that roiled the city’s tight-knit tennis community.
But, even as commissioners declared game, set, match, another player said he will continue to fight to retain his contract to run the South Olive Tennis Center.
Skip Jackson, the decades-long director of the recently refurbished center south of Forest Hill Boulevard, has no intention of dropping the lawsuit he filed against the city after it disqualified his bids to operate South Olive along with tennis centers at Howard and Gaines parks, his attorney, Bernard Lebedeker, said.
Further, Lebedeker said, when city commissioners agreed with Let’s Play Tennis that significant mistakes were made in the selection process, it gave Jackson powerful ammunition to use in his lawsuit.
“We’re halfway there. They admitted the process was flawed,” Lebedeker said.
Could have started over again
Before the city disqualified Jackson, he filed a bid protest, raising many of the same issues that Let’s Play Tennis used to persuade commissioners that it, not USTA Florida, should get the contract.
Palm Beach resident Cameron Lickle in June formed Let’s Play Tennis with the former No. 5-ranked tennis player, South African Kevin Anderson, who lives in Gulf Stream. Lickle railed against bias that he said had permeated the process.
Like Jackson, Lickle questioned why USTA Florida wasn’t disqualified for not divulging that its parent company, USTA, was involved in sexual assault litigation.
Further, like Jackson, Lickle detailed scoring irregularities by the city staff selection committee that appeared designed to assure USTA Florida would be selected over his company and four others that sought the contract.
Given the nearly identical claims by Jackson and Lickle, the path the commission should have taken was obvious, Lebedeker said.
“This is one of those situations where a smart person would say we should start all over,” Lebedeker said.
Commissioner Christy Fox was the lone commissioner to support that approach. Taking the contract away from USTA Florida and handing it to Let’s Play Tennis won’t solve underlying problems, she said.
“I want to make sure we get it right, but I’m also not convinced we are making the best decision for what the residents want,” she said.
Commissioner Christina Lambert, who took the lead in crafting a solution, argued that the procedural problems were too big to ignore.
Fox concurred. “I do agree there is an error here but I also think we had an original protester which I believe there might be additional issues with this solicitation in general,” she said. “So, I am not going to support your motion but I do agree there were procedural errors here.”
Challenging selection of USTA
Controversy about the contract erupted days after a committee of city staffers in November picked USTA Florida to get the contract to run the three centers.
Tennis players who are loyal to Jackson and Mark Jones, the longtime director at Howard Park who also submitted a bid that was rejected, began circulating petitions, demanding that the staff decision be reversed.
On Nov. 24, Lebedeker filed Jackson’s bid protest.
He argued that USTA Florida had violated the process by claiming it had “no pending lawsuit, and/or past litigation relevant to the subject matter of this solicitation.”
A federal jury in Orlando in 2024 awarded $9 million to an Arizona tennis player, finding that she was sexually assaulted by a coach at the national USTA training center in Orlando, next to USTA Florida’s headquarters. USTA is appealing.
That verdict came roughly three years after the USTA paid an undisclosed amount to settle a lawsuit filed by a California boy, who claimed he was abused by a coach at a USTA-affiliated club.
Further adding to what Lebedeker described as a “culture of sexual misconduct,” the longtime director of USTA Florida was permanently banned by the U.S. Center for SafeSport. The watchdog agency said he had engaged in “egregious” forms of misconduct involving minors.
Then, in January, the former director, Douglas Booth, was charged in North Carolina with multiple child sex offenses, dating to the 1980s.
Disqualified for public comments
In the meantime, Jackson became increasingly frustrated that the city’s procurement director, Donna Levengood, hadn’t responded to his bid protest, Lebedeker said.
So Jackson, his wife and about two dozen tennis players in December went to a City Commission meeting to plead with the commission to reverse the staff decision.
“We’re not asking for special treatment, only fair treatment,” Jackson said. “I am respectfully asking the commission to ensure the South Olive contract goes to the operator who has actually demonstrated the experience, transparency and community commitment that this city requires.”
Less than 14 hours later, Jackson got a letter from Levengood saying that his appearance at the meeting violated what is known as a “cone of silence.” It prohibits bidders from talking to the mayor or city commissioners until a contract is executed.
Roughly a week later, Jackson filed suit against the city. In the lawsuit, Lebedeker claims Jackson was simply exercising his First Amendment rights.
“The comments made by (Jackson) in a public forum are protected speech and cannot be used to prohibit (him) from continuing (his) protest and proceed in the competition for a contract to manage and operate South Olive Tennis,” Lebedeker wrote.
The cone of silence is designed to stop bidders from having backroom meetings with elected officials in hopes of winning a contract. It doesn’t prohibit bidders from speaking at public meetings, Lebedeker said.
Palm Beach County, like most government agencies, specifically allows bidders to speak at public meetings, he said. Its code says that the cone of silence “shall not apply to oral communications at any public proceeding … unless specifically prohibited by the applicable competitive solicitation process.”
There was no prohibition against speaking at commission meetings in the bid documents, Lebedeker said.
Jackson ousted, reinstated
Two months after Jackson filed the lawsuit, city officials again took action against Jackson.
On Feb. 2, he was told his month-to-month contract to operate the South Olive Tennis Center has been canceled. He was ordered to leave the center immediately.
Chrisana Blanco, a South Olive regular, described the chaos that followed. Mothers who were dropping their children off for after-school tennis programs found the gates chained shut. Pros that work for Jackson scrambled to cancel lessons. Those who just wanted to play were locked out.
Two days later, city parks workers called Jackson to say they had second thoughts. They wanted to renegotiate the contract.
A week later, with a new, slightly altered contract in place, Jackson and his team of 10 tennis pros returned.
“This whole process has mystified me,” Lebedeker said.
Now that the City Commission has acted, Lebedeker said it will be up to the courts to sort things out.
On Feb. 25, he said he will ask Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Maxine Cheesman to set a date for her to consider his request for a temporary injunction, preventing the city from enforcing its decision to disqualify Jackson from bidding on the contract.
In court papers, city attorneys are asking Cheesman to deny the temporary injunction and to dismiss the lawsuit because Jackson clearly violated the cone of silence.
Further, they argue that an injunction would hurt the public. “Any delay in the procurement process for management of the Tennis Center Operators will likely cost the taxpayers money and it will also needlessly delay the community benefits the Tennis Center Operators is poised to offer,” they wrote.
As for the USTA, it appears that it won’t challenge the commission’s decision to strip it of the contract and award it to Let’s Play Tennis.
“USTA Florida respects the decision of the commission,” it said in a statement. “We appreciate the opportunity to present our proposal. … We appreciate the city’s investment in these important tennis facilities, and we echo Let’s Play Tennis’s desire to grow all tennis in West Palm Beach.”
