A hearty and enthusiastic group turned out to support pools at the levy forum last night.  Great work, team!

The committee took testimony from three pool supporters and then asked for a show of hands from other members of the audience who would have testified on behalf of pools if time allowed.  Fourteen hands went up.  A very strong showing.  We saw clear enthusiasm and interest on committee faces for our three modest proposals.

Last night was our last opportunity to change minds on the levy committee and convince committee members to include aquatics funding in their final levy proposal.

What’s next?

1. Levy committee finalizes its proposal:  Watch http://www.seattle.gov/council/ for the committee’s revised and final recommendations.  The final committee meeting is June 24.
2. City Council revises and finalizes the levy proposal:  When the city council holds public meetings on the proposal, we’ll need to testify again.  This will happen in July.

We also held a brief team sync after the levy forum.  We focused on the need to testify again about the levy (when it goes before the city council) and how to deepen outreach throughout the city.  As always, email elizabeth@seattlepools.org if you would like to participate in future team meetings.

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At the Levy Forum coming up this Tuesday, aquatics supporters will present three modest proposals to the levy committee.  Unfortunately, the committee’s planning documents strongly suggest that all aquatics funding will be left out of the levy.  Renovation of Greenlake pool is the only aquatics project currently under consideration, but this project falls into the "Facilities" category, a category that is likely to be postponed to a future (theoretical) levy. 

Can you help convince the committee to include aquatics funding?  Yes, you can!  Join us in presenting our modest proposals on Tuesday.  If you can’t make it, send your own letter to the levy committee (parksandgreenspaceslevy@seattle.gov — further details here).

Pools serve all ages and abilities.  The three items we recommend provide tremendous bang-for-the-buck.   All contribute to the health of our citizens, the health of our communities and the health of the natural environment through energy efficiency. 

Our three proposals are summarized below; see here for full details.  Thank you for all your help!

Priority 1:  Fund a Long-Term Aquatics Development Plan. Cost Estimate:  $375,000

This 20-year, city-wide plan would consider emerging needs, maintenance of existing facilities and future construction plans.  It would provide the vision, consensus and concrete plan that would provide the groundwork for both a future capital levy and applications for matching grants. 

Priority 2:  Fund UV Treatment for Existing Pools.  Cost Estimate:  $350,000 

UV treatment is needed for 6 pools in Seattle to deal with an emerging threat to human health (cryptosporidium, an organism that produces symptoms similar to E Coli but resists chlorine treatment).  UV treatment could increase schedulable pool hours by 15% without adding a single pool, plus increase energy efficiency.  This is not maintenance funding—UV systems have never existed for these pools.  UV systems have been added to some pools out of budgets for energy conservation (!?!); however, co-opting energy funds to deal with a health issue is not an effective (or timely) way to deal with the problem.  The triple bang-for-the-buck (health, potential hours and efficiency) make this project a real win-win.

Priority 3:  Fund a Warm Water Therapy/Teaching Pool Add-On.  Cost Estimate:  $420,000

Today’s pools are one-size-fits-all, so they fail to serve a wide range of needs.  Adding a warm-water therapy pool at an existing pool site would broaden accessibility of the pool system and increase pool time for all users.  There is an existing, cost-estimated Parks plan for adding a warm water therapy pool beyond a bulkhead at Helene Madison pool.  Parks chose this location as the best place to put the first warm water pool because of very high demand, high concentration of seniors, relative ease (accessibility, space) of implementation and current high utility costs (worst of all pools).  This project is listed in the Parks Department’s Capital Improvement Plan. 

Note:  These proposals were identified using the criteria provided here for weighing levy proposals.

UPDATE:  The levy proposal has just been posted on the city council web site.  There is one water-focused item: "Convert two wading pools to spray parks."

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Farewell AquaDive, our North End gem.  This time, reports of your closing were not exaggerated.  Your phone is disconnected.  We’ve heard your fabulous filtration system will soon be replaced by condos. 

Lake City has lost a warm and welcoming community gathering place, not to mention the cleanest and clearest pool water found in our city.  Nothing like a huge, over-sized sand filtration system (built when land was cheap) for clean water.  Your locker rooms might have seen better days, but they had accumulated decades of stories and friendships.  Your hot tub might have been intermittently hot in recent years, but it was always full of friends when your boilers ran full steam. 

RIP AquaDive.  You are irreplaceable to so many of us.  We relied on your calm, warm water for rehab and friendship.  We’ll miss you.

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In today’s Seattle Times, Paula Bock writes about The Power of the Pool: Issues of class, culture and political priorities swirl.  Excerpts:

Consider these startling numbers: Nearly 60 percent of African-American children between the ages of 6 and 16 can’t swim, and they drown at three times the overall rate, according to a recent study by the University of Memphis. In Washington state, Asian-American children and adolescents have the highest rate of drowning — 18 percent of the deaths even though they are 7 percent of the state population. …

Historically, black Americans haven’t had easy access to pools, so a disproportionate number don’t know how to swim, may not have insisted their children learn how and, in fact, may have encouraged the kids to stay away from the water, says Mickey Fearn, manager of Community Connections for Seattle Parks and Recreation.

…"With water," Fearn says, "it’s all about confidence. Having the confidence you’re going to be safe…"

In Seattle, Fearn says, you look at all the water and if you can’t swim, "you don’t go kayaking, canoeing, water skiing or sailing, nor do you think of creating businesses in those areas because you have no rapport with the water. Marine sciences, running a charter boat, the fishing industry — all that is cut off."

LAST YEAR, the parks department taught 261,787 swimming lessons. Of those, 14,000 were free, part of a voucher program for third- and fourth-graders; 66 percent of those kids said they’d never swum before. . The city doesn’t track the ethnicity of general pool users or of children in swim lessons, but they do know 40 percent of the 800 swimmers in the summer youth swim league are children of color; a third of the beach lifeguards are people of color; three of the 18 pool coordinators are nonwhite.

If you don’t learn to swim by the time you’re a teen, what’s the likelihood you will? City aquatics director Kathy Whitman sighs. "The population we have to work hard to bring in is those teenagers," she says. …

Teens, she says, prefer the beaches. Perhaps that’s because it’s not so much fun to hang out in hourlong shifts at an indoor rectangular pool (eight of Seattle’s 10 pools). Why not build another outdoor pool?

…The city recently completed a study that found significant demand for outdoor pools and outdoor pool recreation. Mounger Pool in Magnolia, for example, turned away 58 youngsters who wanted to be in Summer Swim League and 80 3-year-olds who wanted lessons. Mounger had almost as many pool visits last year as Evans Pool at Green Lake and more than Rainier Beach Pool, which are open all year.

Also, a recent, related article: New study: 58 percent of black children can’t swim

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Can you spare an hour on June 17th to show your support for putting aquatics into the levy?

Unfortunately, we’ve heard that aquatics facilities or improvements of any kind are not likely to make it into the levy proposal.  Thanks for all your letters of support, but we still have an upward slope ahead of us.

We’re putting together a small, discrete package of concrete ideas for making incremental progress on pools (e.g., $ for planning).  We’re going to take it before the levy committee on Tuesday, June 17th at the last levy forum (see below for details).  We need to make a strong showing at this forum to get pool voices heard above the loud chorus of other priorities for Parks. Can you help?

Even if you aren’t comfortable saying a few words, just come stand up with us when we speak.  You’ll show that you care so much about aquatics that you are willing to take an hour out of your day to deliver your message in person.  As you know, "many faces, many places" is the way to get pools prioritized.

Thanks, as always, for you your help.  If you can’t attend in person, see this post for info on how to help from home.

Details for Tuesday, June 17th, 5:30 – 6:30 p.m.:

• Parks and Green Spaces Levy Committee Public Testimony:
• Seattle Center:  305 Harrison Street (Near Republican and 1st Avenue N.)
• Lopez Room (part of the Northwest rooms)
• Contact elizabeth@seattlepools.org with any questions

Update:  Just discovered this:  The levy committee’s depot of planning documents is here. You’ll see only one solitary mention of aquatics — the need for Greenlake pool renovation is referenced briefly here.  This mention appears to be part of a "comprehensive" laundry list, not a prioritized plan for the levy.

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The Seattle Parks Department just released its preliminary feasibility study for adding outdoor public pools.  This is the study requested by the City Council last year in response to all of your letters of support. 

You can read the study here or read a copy with key points highlighted here.

Key Findings:

• Modern pools with modern designs have excellent cost recovery rates. The two nearby, modern pools have high cost-recover rates because they have varied bodies of water and amenities that meet the needs of a wide variety of citizens simultaneously. Operating costs covered by income in 2007:
  • 87% at Mounger Pool (outdoor)
  • 78% at Montlake Terrace Pool (indoor)
• Seattle has only built one public pool in 30 years.
  
• Our 2 existing outdoor pools have exceptionally high attendance rates.
• Kids are being turned away from lessons due to a lack of capacity: "For youth-oriented programs, both outdoor facilities are at capacity with significant wait lists at Mounger pool." Also:  "Parks programs at all pools generally have full enrollment and wait lists for classes."
• “…Swimming has the second highest levels of participation, second only to walking” according to the 2006 SUPERSTUDY® of Sports Participation Report for Seattle, Washington and the Pacific Region.
• Over 2,000 families have signed up for multi-year waitlists at private pools. Wedgwood & View Ridge charge $50 just to join their wait lists while membership costs are in the thousands-of-dollars range. View Ridge and other private pools require members to live within certain neighborhood boundaries, so they aren’t accessible to most city residents.
• Both existing outdoor pools are located on the far left side of the city, so: "a future priority site should probably be located east of I-5 to balance the location with existing pools."
• There is also an “obvious gap in the Beacon Hill/North Rainier Valley” for pools of any sort – indoor or outdoor.
• City-owned sites of interest include: Jefferson Park, Magnuson Park, the to-be-decomissioned Roosevelt reservoir and the Northgate Park-n-Ride lot.

These results are tremendously encouraging and speak to not just to the need for pools but, most importantly, to the feasibility of building pools without damaging the Parks Department’s operational budget. 

If you would like to be involved in planning follow-up steps, please contact elizabeth@seattlepools.org.  We’re going to have a team planning meeting within the next month or so. 

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This update on the pool project was just submitted to the Wedgwood Community’s newsletter — feel free to submit all or part of it to your community’s newsletter:

Thanks to all of you who spoke for pools as part of the Parks Department strategic planning process, plus the development of the possible follow-up levy to Pro-Parks.

The draft Parks strategic plan is now available (http://www.seattle.gov/parks/Publications/ParksActionPlan.htm) and puts a strong emphasis on health. The plan emphasizes “healthy and diverse communities,” including “healthy and active lifestyles for all.” Pools are exceptionally good at providing healthy opportunities to all ages and abilities, so they could fit well into the general strategic framework proposed by Parks.

Also encouraging is the Parks Department’s preliminary assessment of our city’s outdoor pool facilities. This document (http://seattlepools.org/wp-content/uploads/file/OutdoorPoolStudy.doc) provides strong evidence for the need for pools. Seattle has built only one pool in 30 years and both outdoor public pools are located on the far left-hand side of the city. Kids are being turned away from lessons at public pools due to a lack of capacity. Over 2,000 families are known to be wait-listed for (costly) admission to private pools. The study also reports excellent cost recovery rates for modern pools with varied bodies of water that can meet diverse needs simultaneously. 87% of yearly costs were covered by income at the modern outdoor pool in Seattle (Mounger) while 78% of costs were covered at the modern Montlake Terrace indoor pool.

Subscribe to http://www.seattlepools.org or contact elizabeth@seattlepools.org to keep up to date on how you can help advocate for public pool space. Thanks for all your help!

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