TALK AROUND TOWN: Paying for the Pool with User Fees
“Users should pick up the tab on the pool. I must confess I was always baffled as to why the city wanted to take on the pool in the first place. Other cities are trying to outsource . . . . And now we learn that budgetary projections are off, that the city cannot keep the pool going without cash infusions. First the underground lighting fiasco, now this….”* Astrid Lacitis
“The Piedmont pool is a great resource. This is something that Piedmont needed for a long time, and we should be proud that it now can benefit every member of our community.”* Teddy King
“The pool always benefited every member of our community. Just because the City now runs the pool hasn’t extended the benefit in any way. . . .”* Ryan Gilbert
“What actually happens when you increase daily access is that the need for a taxpayer subsidy goes up. . . . The only sense in which the Club was private was that the cost of running the pool was being paid by private, rather than public funds. That is precisely the public/private partnership that other communities are now searching for to avoid unaffordable public subsidies in this tight budget environment. Piedmont already had it and it had worked for 46 years and it chose to throw it away.” Jon Sakol
“Maybe it is too easy to walk up and use the pool.”* Dick Hunt, Recreation Commission Chairman
(See more comments on the Piedmont Patch)
Read more comments and community discussion on the pool:
- Tax Review Committee Report: pool subsidies to cease or be offset
- “Pool Revenues Fall Short“;
- Commentary from Jon Sakol: “How Piedmont Lost a Free Pool”
- View all PCA pool articles.