A passion for pools

Citizen group schemes to keep local pools afloat

By Christina Cooke

The Times, Jul 30, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (3 Reader comments)

POOL POLITICS – Supporters of an effort to keep open the Tigard-Tualatin School District's swimming pools rally at the Tualatin High School pool Monday afternoon.

Jaime Valdez / The Times

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Rising sophomore MacKenzie Smith does not want to see the high school swimming pools drained for good next year — a possibility that has become very real as the Tigard-Tualatin school system looks to solve its budget woes.

The 15-year-old learned to swim in the Tigard Swim Center when he was 4 and now spends at least two hours a day swimming laps for team practice.

“I’ve been using the pools ever since I was born,” McKenzie said. “That’s one of the places I was raised up, in the water.”

MacKenzie is a member of a grassroots community group that is fighting to keep the Tigard and Tualatin high school pools open.

Often seen in matching blue T-shirts that read “Open Pools — Let’s keep them that way,” the group is working to establish a special aquatics district that would take over the operation of the swimming pools and pass a permanent tax that would provide them a stable source of funding.

The required tax levy is 9 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value, which would equal about $16 per year for owners of a home with a real market value of $300,000, according to the group’s calculations.

“That’s like a dollar or two a month to have access to two swimming pools,” said group member Kristen Clark, whose three children swim for the Tigard-Tualatin Swim Club. “It’s cheap fun in this time of economic tightness.”

The Tigard-Tualatin School District has owned and operated the six-lane pool at Tigard High and the eight-lane pool at Tualatin High since they were constructed in 1969 and 1998, respectively. But in cutting the school budget by around 10 percent this year, school leaders decided pool operation had to go.

“Because of the budget cuts, the school district needs to focus its dollars on the classroom programs,” said schools spokesperson Susan Stark Haydon.

Together, the pools typically lose a net of $500,000 to $600,000 per year.

The school system has budgeted to keep one pool open until May 2010. It plans to “mothball” the other during the 2009-2010 school year, or close it to the public, but preserve it for future use by keeping it full of circulating, minimally-heated and treated water, Stark Haydon said.

The Tigard Tualatin Swim Club is raising money to keep the pool scheduled for mothballing open through May 2010, she said. If the measure does not pass, both pools will be drained and closed permanently. (Once a pool is drained of water, it rises out of the ground and cannot be used again.)

The proposed aquatic district boundary would match that of the Tigard-Tualatin school system, which includes all or part of Tigard, Tualatin, Durham and King City, as well as unincorporated areas in Washington and Clackamas counties. Property owners in these areas are still paying off a bond for the pools’ construction, due to expire in 2016.

Pam Griffith, a member of the group’s steering committee, said people who do not live within the district boundaries could use the pools too, for a slightly higher fee. There has also been discussion of annexing parts of Tigard and Tualatin into the aquatics district later.