Dear Mayor Nash and City Council Members,
I am about to turn 50 and have benefited from the pool, under Tim’s management for about 15 years. I am a current member of the Masters team and both my children, now in HS, learned to swim in the excellent group swim lessons. They both moved from lessons into the swim team. Neither of them chose to be competitive swimmers, but they learned the proficiency and confidence in swimming that will keep them safe in the water and bring them joy throughout their lives. Also, swimming masters regularly, I get to see other uses of the pool. There is a thriving aqua aerobics community year-round. Swim lessons for younger kids are in the same pool, which is kept warmer to meet the needs of both groups. In the summer, there are camps that provide a mix of fun and critically-needed water safety programs. Tim has also created a schedule where there is a constant availability of lap swim. In the afternoons, there are also swim teams. The pool is heavily used by a range of people with different swimming goals. The argument that the pool is exclusive has little merit on a factual level. There is a broad range of heavily subscribed programs and the schedule also provides almost constant availability for lap swim. While there are always ways to improve programming, the usage suggest that what could be needed are tweaks not overhauls.
Back to the Masters team. If your top goal is to serve as many community members as possible, you need to keep Tim running the pool and its Masters programs. During most practices, there are around 30 people (conservatively) and, not infrequently, 50 people enjoying swimming together. I know some people have voiced concern that the team is somehow exclusive. Yes, there are VCs—this is Menlo Park and some of them walk to the pool. They are your constituents and your community. I’m an educator and I feel welcome. Yes, there are people who have won NCAA titles; and there are people in their 70s and 80s. One of my greatest joys as a swimmer was counting laps for a teammate at a swim meet who I barely knew at that point, only to realize that not only was he 80 years old but he also had a pacemaker. And he still raced 1000 yards. I was inspired by him (and many others). This team has redefined my sense of aging and health. It is set up so that people across all swimming abilities can find people at their level to share a workout with.
Which brings me to my last point, “sharing.” What makes this all work is that Tim Sheeper has built more than a health and sports program. It’s a shared community. Shortly after I joined the team, there was a message about someone who had been in a serious accident. Teammates signed up to bring this person food and, even though I had never met her, I signed up too. We have been friends since then. Thanks to this swimming community, my friends range in age from their 20s to their 70s. I know people who swim in all of the lanes, have a full range of life experiences, and whose politics run the spectrum. At any given time, you’ll find masters swimmers, people doing water aerobics, and small children learning to swim. Our country needs spaces where people who have many differences find shared experiences.
If you do not extend Tim’s contract, you will likely find that the efficiency of Burgess Pool’s use declines, along with the revenues you get from all of the people who use the pool. On top of that, you will lose the precious and intangible talents of Tim. Given his gifts, he will find another pool and the masters community will move there with him. I will be among the people no longer paying to swim at Burgess and taking my dollars elsewhere.
-Alix Gallagher
