I watched last night's Parks & Rec. committee meeting and was appalled by the presentation and the apparent lack of interest by most of the committee. There are problems that need to be addressed. One is that the programs cater almost exclusively to childrens' camps and athletes. Tim's contract calls for the pool to be accessible to all abilities. To fail to provide for seniors and those (often youthful people, or pregnant women) who need access to less athletic recreation, is discriminatory. Tim spoke about not wanting to mix age groups in order to protect kids from seniors was just nonsense. Seniors are the ones who have been completely vaxxed for months, whereas kids have not.
Also, a lot of pool time appears to be taken up by teams, such as the Palo Alto/Stanford group, yet it was not explained why they are swimming at Burgess and not at Stanford or a local school.
There were several inaccuracies in the slides. For example, Wellness classes used to be 3X/week in two separate sessions, totaling 6X/week (MWF 9-10 and 10-1)
If Tim is having difficulty finding instructors for the Wellness classes, and if he cannot persuade Sheralee Beebe to come back, perhaps he could investigate the potential for having Foothill College fund an Adaptive Wellness class, as happened about 20 years ago.
I was shocked to see that he anticipates charging $150/month for the Wellness class if it is ever resuscitated. This too seems discriminatory. The pricing needs review. If the drop in for laps is $8 and that for Aquafit (in the same pool) is $20, that is why people pay for laps and join the aquafit class.
It was very troubling to see people with serious disabilities in the Aquafit class where they could have been injured - especially since I only saw one lifeguard and he was on a ladder in the performance pool. Also, I have been told that the disabled chair has not functioned in ages. One person with mobility issues had a real struggle getting out of the pool out of the first Aquafit class and I was afraid they were going to be injured.
Obviously Tim has to make money, but that should not be the main objective for a city pool that is intended to serve the entire population, not just athletes.
