Hi there, For a number of years, I've been increasingly alarmed as I've watched the Burgess Pool become privatized by the contractor the city has in place. Where there were once group swim lessons, now much of the pool is reserved for private lessons. In the morning, when I like to frequent the pool for laps before work, the Master's Program takes up all but two of the lanes that community members may use. This means that often eight or ten people have to share two lanes, even when the lanes reserved for Masters students have fewer people in them. And on weekends, free swim for families has been relegated to a few lanes for a few hours on Saturdays and Sundays. Many weekends, the lap pool is also closed due to private events like water polo tournaments and triathlon events. These are teams that pay to use our community's resources even as the local community is getting squeezed out. Now with the re-opening of the pool in these pandemic conditions, this privatization of our city pool has only become more stark. Lap swimming lanes are not open to community members between 6-8 am and reserved for Masters swimmers only. This program is $120/mo and cost-prohibitive for many families in our community including mine. The pool has also begun offering private swim lessons again to families for a staggering $76 per lesson. I have brought my concerns over the years to Tim Sheeper and his team, but they have fallen on deaf ears. I've been told they can't make changes, that I don't understand the aquatics industry today, etc...While I understand that our pool is an invaluable resource and rising costs in our area pose challenges, I also understand that I'm a tax paying member of our community. In my opinion, these resources are being misused and abused to benefit the contractor's bottom line and an elite subset of our community. I'm concerned that there's little to no oversight of this contract to ensure that the private company running our community pool is actually serving our community in an equitable way. I'd like to ask the City Council to investigate the situation and/or take action to ensure that standards are met so that the entire community has access to our pools both from a pricing and availability standpoint. Thank you! Jessica Taylor 1415 Mills Ct. Received on Sat Jun 20 2020 - 13:26:30 PDT
