More than 40 community members attended a “mock swimathon” benefit at Willard Middle School on Saturday to raise awareness for two November ballot measures aiming to renovate and build new pools for the city.
At the event, children from Berkeley schools dressed in aquatic-themed costumes and held races on top of the school’s dirt-filled pool — which the city closed in 2010 and filled with dirt due to lack of funds to support upkeep.
If approved by two-thirds of voters, Measure O will implement a parcel tax generating $604,000 in funds for pool maintenance and operations, and Measure N will create a $19.4 million bond measure for the construction and renovation of the city’s swimming pools.
“You’re sitting here looking at a pool filled with dirt, and that calls out for some parody and protests,” said Robert Collier, co-chair of the Berkeley Pools Campaign. “There’s nothing more ridiculous than a pool at a school much loved by the community … that’s filled with dirt.”
Collier said pools play a crucial role within the Berkeley community by being safe places for young children to learn how to swim and convenient locations for physical therapy for the disabled and senior citizens.
“Everybody should have access to pools — it is part of community life, and it’s good for health,” he said. “This event shows what our campaign is like. It’s a very sincere and earnest group of very dedicated people who care about their pools and community.”
Measure N would specifically provide funding to build a new warm pool at West Campus and to replace or renovate the pools at Willard and Martin Luther King Jr. middle schools. The less costly and contingent Measure O would pay for the maintenance and operation of just the warm pool at the Berkeley Unified School District’s West Campus site and the Willard Middle School pool, if Measure N passes.
Currently, the city only has two operating swimming pools, at King Middle School and West Campus, and neither is heated. The Willard Middle School pool closed in 2010, and Berkeley High School’s warm pool closed in 2011.
Barbara Gilbert, a member of local fiscal accountability organization Berkeley Budget SOS, said that while the pools play an important part in the community, they should not be the city’s top priority. The current financial condition of the city necessitates a better look at what should receive funding at this time, she said.
“The city of Berkeley has $1.2 billion in unfunded needs … so this is huge,” she said. “We don’t have unlimited money. You have to look at it as part of a larger picture.”
Gilbert denies that the city only has two public pools and said there are many other pools in the city, including UC Berkeley’s and the Downtown Berkeley YMCA’s pool.
“With a little cooperation and effort, arrangements could be worked out to meet some of the needs of the pool people at a tiny fraction of the cost of these measures,” Gilbert said.
But Kriss Worthington, a Berkeley City Council member and mayoral candidate, said people traveling out of their way to use these pools is ridiculous. Having the pools closer in Berkeley and connected to local schools is vital for the community in learning how to swim, he said.
“Having the pools at the schools is important, as it’s a way for teachers to regularly bring their classes en masse to come and learn how to swim,” Worthington said. “They’re not going to take their kids a long distance away from the school on a regular basis — that’s just not a realistic, practical alternative.”
However, Gilbert disagrees with this assessment and said that upward of 90 percent of the people who use Berkeley pools get there through public transit or by driving.
“I don’t buy that argument,” she said. “Very few people are within the radius to walk to pools. If those parents want their kids to go to a pool, they can take them to King or the YMCA. Most people do that — that’s just the way it is.”
Angel Jaramillo, a 9-year-old student at John Muir Elementary, hopes the measures do pass, since he believes the pools would be great places to go during the summer.
“I’ve never seen it filled with water and everything … so I kind of feel a little bit sad,” he said. “It is an important issue and for a good cause — I hope that they bring the pool back.”
Contact Andy Nguyen at [email protected].
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Even if the pool bond passes, the Willard pool would not be available to swim in. It’s an outdoor pool and Parks and Recreation shows it as being open only for the summer months.
A new outdoor pool at Willard is like a brand new pair of bell bottom pants.
Actually, the Willard pool is open year round. We (teachers at Willard) teach swimming through PE classes throughout the year.. It doesn’t close like Strawberry Canyon Pool up the hill. Get your facts straight. We need the pool to be open.
How about some of you trendy lefties doing without your lattes and raising money yourselves?
You staunch conservatives should raise money for your tax cuts for the rich in the same way.
You’re obviously confused on a number of things, child.
Yes. Like how conservatives passed their math exams. Or how God missed them when he was handing out ethics.
In other words, you can’t really address the issue I brought up, which is why liberals/progressives who believe in non-profit television don’t raise money themselves to support what they believe in. It’s a known fact that conservatives willingly donate a larger percentage of their earnings to charitable causes than do liberals. Why is that again?
“In other words, you can’t really address the issue I brought up”
Which is quite obviously why you began this discussion with a quip about “trendy lefties” with their lattes. You’re such a fat beer-drinking, gun-loving redneck. By the way, it’s time to clean the Cheetos off the floor of your trailer home.
“It’s a known fact that conservatives willingly donate a larger
percentage of their earnings to charitable causes than do liberals. Why
is that again?”
I don’t know, why is that? Because it’s also a well-know fact that conservatives have a lower average IQ than liberals and are more afraid of death.
I’m sure you think you’re impressing everyone with your clever retorts, but in reality, all you are doing is making an ass of yourself. See, people in the real world can’t always get what they want, so they set their priorities as to what’s important to them and act accordingly. A lot of us forego things such as new cars, trendy eateries, and the latest high-tech toys in order to spend our money on what we believe is more important, not only in our personal lives but for charity as well. Many conservatives – the type of people you hate and despise for reasons based far more on emotion than logic – actively donate to private charities for a number of reasons, including the belief that charitable activities should be conducted by private citizens, not government. Mitt Romney, a man who you probably will not vote for, has donated far, far more of his money to charity over the years than Obama has. Yet you lefties, who never hesitate to demand that everyone ELSE pay for your wonderful ideas through higher taxes, have tantrums whenever somebody suggests YOU subordinate your own personal pleasures to the benefit of others and open up YOUR wallets accordingly. Another prime example of the narcissism, hypocrisy, and overall childish behavior of the Left…
Your entire premise is that citizens can never publicly fund anything that YOU DEFINE as a “personal pleasure,” yet we should be obligated to spend billions to subsidize, prop up, and economically enrich certain well-connected, well-propertied groups of citizens. You propose that anything that actually invests in the well-being and quality of life of non well-connected citizens be provided only by private charity. Welfare for the rich, austerity and disinvestment for the rest of us, the same old bs. In case you didn’t notice, the citizens advocating for the pools will be paying taxes for them as well.
That was the rebuttal to your premise. Now to the rebuttal of your existence: You are a fetid, diseased cUnt, unworthy of existing in anything remotely resembling a human community, to which you deny any responsibility and contribute nothing but your own greed and bootlicking. Your continued existence and sharing of the same oxygen is a disgrace to human evolution. Your entire existence is devoted to remaining insulated and comfortably numb from the consequences of your absurd ideology, hiding behind cardboard cutouts of individualism and railing against true responsibility and progressive taxation. It could not be more obvious that if you “had to raise money yourself to support everything you believe in,” your privileged perch and illusion of security would evaporate, leaving you crying and writhing about like an exposed Jimmy Swaggart/Glen Beck/Ted Haggard closet-case hybrid, which is after all the unsurprising fate of sock puppets.
[Your entire premise is that citizens can never publicly fund anything
that YOU DEFINE as a "personal pleasure,"]</I.
Before you foam and flail, have you ever considered that there are legitimate concerns as to the role of government as well as priorities?
[ yet we should be obligated to
spend billions to subsidize, prop up, and economically enrich certain
well-connected, well-propertied groups of citizens.]
And I have stated that where? Please, show me specifics to back up your ludicrous accusation or kindly STFU.
[ou propose that anything that actually invests in the well-being and
quality of life of non well-connected citizens be provided only by
private charity.]
And why is that a problem? Why should everybody run to government for this type of stuff instead of people getting together on their own and doing it voluntarily with their own money?
[Welfare for the rich, austerity and disinvestment for the rest of us,
the same old bs.]
Correction: your silly class warfare rhetoric is the same old BS here.
[In case you didn't notice, the citizens advocating for
the pools will be paying taxes for them as well.]
If that’s so,why can’t those same citizens get together, form a cooperative, and do it themselves directly without going through the government to do it? That would allow them some semblance of control to ensure that the money gets used properly instead of diverted to someone else’s pet project, correct? So why to you have some philosophical aversion to people taking the initiative on their own to deal with an issue, unless you honestly believe that the role of the common citizen is to be helpless and dependent on government to do everything for them?
[Now to the rebuttal of your existence: You are a fetid, diseased cUnt,
unworthy of existing in anything remotely resembling a human community,
to which you deny any responsibility and contribute nothing but your own
greed and bootlicking.]
Thanks for that excellent example of the nasty mindset of the left. And you people have the nerve to call CONSERVATIVES “hateful”?
Dirty socialist kids demanding safe places to play…pssssssssshhhh.