The pool at Kenai Central High School is one of several in jeopardy. That’s after the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District announced earlier this year it would no longer fund pools due to ongoing budget shortfalls. During a Kenai City Council meeting last week, swimmers made their case for why the city should help try and keep it open. The meeting comes just two months before the pool’s doors are scheduled to close.
Planned pool closures in Kenai, Soldotna, Seward, Homer, Ninilchik and Seldovia have spurred community conversations boroughwide. Seldovia is considering raising property taxes to fund their pool. Ninilchik residents voted down a special recreation area for the pool last autumn. And stakeholders recently pitched a plan to the Soldotna City Council.
In Kenai, City Manager Terry Eubank says it’s been a long and sometimes frustrating process trying to get information about pool operations from the district. He says he’s met with other city managers and the borough mayor to talk through possible solutions. And he says Kenai’s all-age nonprofit swim team has been proactive. But the clock is ticking. Starting July 1, the school district will stop funding the pool.
“What I'm excited about, and I think am trying to move in the direction of, is our local swim club, you know, potentially taking over the actual management function of the facility under contract with the school district, in which the city could participate with the swim club and potentially help offset some of their costs or help with funding of the model that they're going to use,” he said.
Something Eubank says he’s struggling with is a roughly $55,000 difference between the district’s estimated pool operating costs and estimated savings from closing the pool. A presentation shared with the council shows the district expects to save around $250,000 by closing the pool. They estimate the cost to an outside entity of assuming management would be a little over $300,000.
“I don't agree with their stance that, if you tell me that you're only going to save $5 from shutting something down, and you ask me to pay $10, I don't – that doesn't compute,” he said. “In this case, you're asking, you know, somebody, to pay you more than you can save by simply doing nothing.”
Kevin Lyon is the school district employee in charge of pools. He says the district doesn’t save as much money by closing the pool because it will still have to pay utilities for the space, even if the pool is drained. When determining how much it would cost for an outside group to take over operations, he says the calculations assume that group will pick up all utility costs at the pool space.
There was no shortage of passion and pride for the pool among those who attended last week’s city council meeting.
Abigail Price is a record-breaking swimmer with Kenai Central High School’s swim team. She’s graduating from high school next month and says she will be attending college with a swimming scholarship.
“I want my little sister and the rest of my community to be able to have the same opportunities, and I want kids to be safe,” she said. “I teach lessons in the summer on a lifeguarding program, and we have a lot of kids come in, and when they leave, they're always so much better and so much more confident in the water.”
Dan Castimore is a self-described “swim aficionado” and parent of a Peninsula Piranhas Swimmer. He’s also the city’s information technology manager. He says the club wants to be partners with the city when determining the future of the school pool.
“Really, what we're here today is to ask you to see if you can work with us, to see if we can be partners in this,” he said. “We want to make sure these pools stay open. I think they're community assets. I think you guys, most of you, will agree that these are community assets.”
Eubank says nothing official has happened yet. The council held a closed-door meeting to discuss the city’s negotiation strategy and as of Monday had not made any financial offers to the district. Lyon said Thursday that he was not aware of firm plans to keep any of the seven school pools open past July 1.
