Pool Politics

 

In a Baltimore this week some young people made the news who probably would rather not have been in the spotlight. 

Screenshot captured from WBAL social media post

Several children were caught breaking into one of the many Baltimore City pools that remain closed with their gates chained. The break-in was caught on Monday. Footage details the children breaking in, setting up "camp", and entering the water along with a scooter. - - WBAL News Radio

Locals were quick to ask why the city had money to use helicopters for surveillance but not money to repair and or staff the three closed pools: Lake Clifton, Patterson Park, and Cherry Hill. After a good deal of public back-and-forth, one of the pools - - Lake Clifton - - opened on Friday.

Baltimore City Public Pools are free. There are plenty of residents for whom they are the only way to cool off during increasingly hotter and hotter summers. State law as of yet does not require rental housing to provide working air conditioning, although it should. This summer’s heat is brutal. These kids often have nowhere to go to escape it. 

The pools that are closed this summer aren’t in the well-to-do neighborhoods of Baltimore known as the White L.  Routine disinvestment is the lot of residents who live in the Black Butterfly. The expectations of the affluent keep Baltimore City services hopping. It’s a persistent problem rooted in systemic racism and Redlining. 

Here in Columbia, an official announcement about outdoor pools came across with an eerily similar vibe.

 

Pool Updates from CA Aquatics

Hope summer has been treating you well! We’ve been having a blast at CA’s pools with you all, and as you know, safety is a top priority for our Aquatics team. 

Due to staffing challenges, we are making a few updates to the pool schedule to keep the community as safe as possible. While the majority of CA’s outdoor pools will remain open until their scheduled last day, four pools will now close at an earlier date. This change will allow us to reallocate team members so that each pool is fully staffed. 

Sunday, July 30 will be the final day for the following locations:

Talbott Springs Pool (also closed this weekend - Saturday, July 22 and Sunday, July 23 - and reopening Monday, July 24)

Dasher Green Pool

Longfellow Pool  

Sunday, August 13 will be the final day for Running Brook Pool. As a reminder, CA is home to 23 outdoor pools and you can check the schedule for each and every pool on our Pool Status webpage.

Thanks so much for your patience and understanding as we work to keep you safe! Here’s to a fun-filled end of summer. 

Marty L. Oltmanns, Aquatics Director

Invariably, when pools are closed early, it is the ones located in the least affluent areas of Columbia. Always. Never has anyone suggested closing, say, River Hill pools in order to shift staff so that pools in Oakland Mills or Owen Brown can stay open. Can you imagine CA leaderships suggesting to folks in River Hill that there are plenty of other pools so they can just hop in their cars to visit one?

But that’s the suggestion to members of the Columbia community who may be the least able to”hop in a car” to go anywhere. And there’s also the matter of what kind of a reception they might get showing up in different villages. We claim to be such an accepting, diverse environment but…

If most people understand that there are the “rich pools” and the “poor pools” then exactly how well are we doing here? I took a look at a CA report based on 2010 census data that show median household income and racial identity by village.

“Characteristics of Columbia” report, Columbia Association 

Pool closures aren’t entirely along household income lines or racial lines but they are close. I’m guessing that CA would be able to show data on pool usage and maintain that the ones they are closing are the least utilized pools. Nothing to do with income or race. Not one a bit.

Why are some pools in less affluent areas under utilized? Could it be because you have to purchase a year- round membership even if all you want to do is use outdoor pools in the summer? Or that the daily entrance fees for those with Columbia Cards is still prohibitive for these residents?

I don’t know. 

I do know that CA has been wrestling with these issues for quite a while now. Years ago I met a member of the CA Board who introduced himself to me, laughingly, by saying, “Well, you’re not going to like me, because I’m trying to close your pool.” He meant Talbott Springs.

The well-to-do get good service and expect that it will be continued. The rest just have to wait and see. Should we be able to do better in Columbia? Not better than Baltimore. That’s not at all what i mean. 

Better than we are (and have been) doing right here in the New American City.