Fred Endert Municipal Pool: Underwater | Crescent City California ...

Officials: Pool will stay open despite deficit

A swimmer does laps at Fred Endert Municipal Pool. Del Norte Triplicate/Bryant Anderson

Staying happy and healthy in this town can come down to a simple choice: sink or swim.

And though we?re surrounded by wild waterways, for the better part of the year the only option for a dip is Fred Endert Municipal Pool, a place where fitness, health, relaxation and society come together, six days a week, rain or shine.

Many depend on the warmed, half-Olympic size pool for physical therapy and low-impact exercise. Some come to slip and splash on the waterslide during recreation times. About 50 kids are part of the swim club, while 100 people currently take swim lessons, a mainstay of the programming since the pool first opened in 1966. There?s also a new class of pool-goers created by recent facility improvements ? sauna and hot tub enthusiasts.

Draining the coffers

The city made over a $1 million in upgrades to the pool in 2009, which included the cedar sauna, hot tub, an enormous mural of aquatic life starring Fred the octopus, an additional swimming lane and a modern salt-water chlorination system, which makes the water much easier on the eyes and softer on the skin.

Last year, there were 48,500 visits to the pool, a spike of 8,500 compared to pre-renovation counts, said the pool?s manager Matt Hildebrandt.

More than twice as many of these visits took place during adult swim times as during family recreation times. ?

And even though the place is frequently hopping, the pool is perpetually a drain on city coffers.

Pool Manager Matt Hildebrandt during a lap swimming session. Hildebrandt first worked at the pool in 1978. He?s since taught thousands of people how to swim. Del Norte Triplicate/Bryant Anderson

?If we had a hundred-fold increase in usership, it?s still not going to get us out of jail on that particular case,? then-Mayor Charles Slert said of the pool during a discussion of the city?s financial woes during an October City Council meeting.

Shortly thereafter, the council agreed to close the pool on Sundays as a cost-saving measure.

Now city officials are again starting to grapple with a cash-strapped budget for the next fiscal year, causing public concern that the pool might close.

No chance it?s going to close, especially after such a huge investment has been made in the facility, said City Manager Eugene Palazzo in a recent interview.

He likened the pool to the police department, in that it will likely never pay for itself, instead drawing on the general fund and grant dollars.

?It?s a public service,? he said. ?My question is, would you spend 25 cents more to swim? Those are the things we need to look at, but sometimes when you lower a fee by 25 cents, you get more users and it balances out.?

Bills, bills, bills

It costs your average patron $3.50 a pop to utilize the facilities, while multiple swim passes are discounted.

The non-profit Promote Our Pool Foundation gives scholarships to people with disabilities, veterans and the swim club. POP also financed part of the renovations through community fundraising.

Meanwhile, the pool costs the city about $36,000 a month to operate.

The new facility runs with a $264,000 annual deficit, a hole that is about $40,000 deeper than it was in 2008.

A couple of younger patrons splash during a family swim time at the recently renovated Fred Endert Municipal Pool. Del Norte Triplicate/Bryant Anderson

The price of utilities has nearly doubled since that time, almost entirely from natural gas used to heat the pool, an expense that averages $11,000 a month.

There are 18 employees, two full-time positions and 16 lifeguards, mostly high school or community college students.

User fees bring in about $161,500 a year, or $27,000 a month.

Another $56,400 in revenue this year came from a Community Development Block Grant.

?We need to look at ways to lower our costs of operation or up our user fees,? Palazzo said.

Now the city is putting together a feasibility study on a green energy project, which would use heat generated at the wastewater treatment plant to heat the pool. The cleaned grey water carrying this heat would then go into an irrigation system at Beachfront Park.

If it?s doable, this project could eventually cut the pool?s gas bill down by 75 percent or more.

Different strokes

It might be 40 degrees and raining outside, but it?s always around 84 degrees in the pool.

?The seniors would love it to be 86 or 87 degrees. The lap swimmers would like it to be 80. We try to do something in the middle that kind of works for everyone,? Hildebrandt said.

In the sauna on a recent evening, a baseball player still in his teens shot the breeze with a Ukrainian expatriate, a seasoned bather who has been sweating it out in similar fashion for decades. A woman in her 50s waxed poetic about the perfect avocado with a group of girls in their 20s. Another guy sat shadowed in the hottest corner of the cozy cedar box for nearly half an hour, pouring cold water on his shoulders every so often and staying absolutely mum.

Point being, whether you?re sweating or swimming, fit or working on it; active or lazy; young, old or somewhere in between ? there?s a spot for everyone in the pool?s schedule, available online at www.crescentcity.org/pool.htm

Reach Emily Jo Cureton at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Source: http://www.triplicate.com/News/Local-News/Fred-Endert-Municipal-Pool-Underwater

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