Hi everyone,
Just wanted to give our city pool-loving neighbors a heads up. The Austin City
Council is weighing whether or not to formally accept the new Aquatics Master
Plan on August 10. As you may have heard over the past few months, aquatics
facilities are underfunded within the Parks & Recreation budget. So much so
that many of our aging city neighborhood pools may be at risk of closure. This
master plan will lay a roadmap for repair priorities, choices for expansions,
and (our favorite) future bond elections.
I’ve attached the latest article from the Statesman below. If you are a fan and
frequenter of city pools, I implore you to contact Council Member Ann Kitchen
to let her know which pools you frequent and why… lots of decisions on their
future coming up.
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Nelly Paulina Ramirez | Toulouse Dr.
COVNA VP and Austin Neighborhood Council Rep
Council Member Ann Kitchen, District 5 (512) 978-2105
http://www.mystatesman.com/news/local/parks-board-austin-pools-master-plan-sets-aquatic-hunger-games/wBI2lJ68XMnlZDj8k86D0H/
<http://www.mystatesman.com/news/local/parks-board-austin-pools-master-plan-sets-aquatic-hunger-games/wBI2lJ68XMnlZDj8k86D0H/>
Parks board: Austin pools master plan sets up aquatic Hunger Games
Posted: 2:30 p.m. Sunday, July 30, 2017
Tamir Kalifa
Highlights
<>A new master plan estimates it would cost $193 million to fix all city
swimming pools and build four new ones.
<>Report: If Austin closes 10 pools, it would cost $152 million to upgrade
the rest and build four new ones.
<>New pool rankings are intended to determine which to prioritize repairing
and which to consider closing.
Reluctant to lend their support to a plan that they said will almost
certainly lead to closing swimming pools, members of the Austin Parks and
Recreation Board recently declined to endorse the first full draft of the
city’s aquatics master plan.
The master plan, which has been in the works since 2012, ranks city swimming
pools for repairs and recommends closing an unspecified 10 to save money. The
report recommends $152 million in upgrades to other pools and construction of
four new pools in underserved areas, but there’s no plan for where that money
would come from.
Board member Rick Cofer called the plan a “decommission report” that
shouldn’t be recommended to the City Council without greater consensus. The
council is set to receive a briefing on the report Tuesday and weigh whether
to formally accept it Aug. 10.
“My fear is that, at some point, with this tool, it sets up the aquatics
version of a Hunger Games,” Cofer said. “Except, instead of teenagers killing
each other, you have neighborhoods pitted against each other.”
The board backed him unanimously at its July 25 meeting in making no
recommendation for or against the plan and instead asking to create a working
group to further address the issue.
The Austin staff worked with consulting firm Brandstetter Carroll Inc. to
rank Austin pools’ suitability for improvements, based on criteria such as
nearby demographics, accessibility, condition of the facility and site
considerations. Fourteen of the 33 city pools ranked poorly, many of them in
the oldest central city neighborhoods.
That doesn’t necessarily mean those pools will immediately close, but it does
mean they’re likely to be low on the priority list to fix in a system that is
rapidly deteriorating, with little parks department expectation of bringing
in the funding needed to repair everything.
“By no means does (the ranking) mean that the department is really excited to
see pools (marked as low priority) that are suitable to decommission; it just
means that I cannot continue down this path,” said Kimberley McNeeley, the
department’s acting director. “Rather than making an arbitrary decision, I
have tools now.”
The average age of the city’s swimming pools is 50 years, though their usable
life should be only about 25 to 30 years. The city has struggled to keep up
with pool maintenance over the decades.
A city Bond Advisory Task Force will evaluate requests from various
departments over the coming months, with a goal of recommending to City
Council members in December which spending requests to pitch to voters in a
2018 bond election.
The parks department plans to ask for $120 million, the staff said last week
— but only $15 million of it for aquatics. The department intends to ask for
$40 million to fix facilities such as Dougherty Arts Center and $65 million
to improve infrastructure such as trails, playscapes and cemeteries citywide.
The master plan calls for upgrading Balcones, Bartholomew, Garrison,
Northwest and Deep Eddy to large regional aquatic centers and adding four
community pools in the city’s farthest northern and southern corners. The
suitability ranking would determine whether to renovate or close neighborhood
pools.
If the city were to upgrade all of its facilities and add the four new ones,
it would cost $193 million, the master plan estimates. But planners are
instead recommending the closure of 10 neighborhood pools, which would lower
the cost to $152 million.
McNeeley called that a strategic option to consolidate facilities, using East
Austin pools Metz and Martin as examples of two that are closer together than
necessary.
But even that recommended option would leave funding unclear.
“Either way, we’re looking at $140 million to $180 million, and our next
proposed bond is for $15 million?” board member Francoise Luca said. “Fifteen
million doesn’t go anywhere with any of this.”
That, McNeeley said, is why there’s a need to move forward quickly on
evaluating the plan and determining what to do next.
Board Chairwoman Jane Rivera endorsed the idea of a working group, saying
that the citizens have to understand the reality of the problem and the
city’s priorities.
“The quickest way to create the dialogue is to put out that list of pools
that are in jeopardy,” she said. “The question is: Are we going to have the
Hunger Games now or later?”
