June 13, 2009 08:05 pm According to a new report, Grand Traverse County employees who run Easling Pool are in over their heads -- to the tune of more than $250,000 in 2008 alone. The report by Dave Rowland, founder and president of Connecticut-based Lutra Aquatics, said there are too many lifeguards on duty most of the time, the county has failed to properly charge users and scheduling makes using the pool inconvenient. In his $19,275 report, Rowland said the pool was "dingy, inconvenient to use, overstaffed and its employees (are) unfocused on customer service." In addition to staffing and scheduling changes, he recommended the county: curtail freeloading by properly staffing the pool office to collect swim fees; reduce liability by requiring pool users to sign liability waivers; institute internal controls over cash-handling to prevent theft; and simplify pool schedule and class offerings. The report came as no surprise to county Commissioner Christine Maxbauer, who for three years has criticized pool operations, including staffing levels. The only surprising thing, perhaps, is that so little has been done to address the issues Maxbauer and Rowland brought up even though some of them have been on the table for years. Last fall, when the county board finally agreed to fund a study of pool operations, the county said the pool, which takes up 54 percent of the county's entire $890,000 recreation budget, has lost an average of $115,000 a year for the past seven years, a total of $805,000 during that time. That's a staggering sum that should have long ago drawn the day-to-day interest of county Administrator Dennis Aloia until it was resolved; when nothing changed, Maxbauer went public with her concerns. Last fall, the full county board agreed to fund the report. To the county's credit, if it can be phrased that way, the situation at Easling is not unique. In fact, despite the fact that he described the pool's financial situation as "dismal, extreme and unnecessary," Rowland also said it was about average for a government-run operation. "Most municipal aquatic facilities lose hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, primarily because a lot of them are run in a very similar fashion to each other," Rowland said. The large expenditures to serve a relatively small population "could be termed staggering," he said. That's fine -- to a point. Running a pool costs money in a dozen ways. Heating and circulating the water is expensive, paying lifeguards is expensive, constant testing of and chemicals for the water is expensive. This is not a softball diamond, which needs to be mowed maybe a couple times a week and raked out every once in a while. But racking up a deficit of $250,000 in a single year or $800,000 over seven years is excessive -- particularly when there are solutions that have been offered but never enacted. Rowland suggested the county focus on selling pool memberships instead of large group rentals; that it raise the cost of single pool visits from $3.75 to $10 while keeping annual passes at $189; that it get staffing levels under control; and that it cut down on the number of breaks by lifeguards -- when everyone must get out of the pool. He said staffing at "appropriate levels" -- there are on average three lifeguards on duty when one would do, he said -- could save the county $113,000 a year. That's almost equal to the average $115,000 the pool lost per year over the past seven years. The pool is an amenity and it would be wrong to try to turn it into a revenue source. Charging $10 per use seems excessive; that may be fine in Chicago, but not in northern Michigan. But with the proper corrections in place, there appears to be plenty of room to maneuver -- room for the county to greatly reduce the subsidy for the pool while keeping it affordable for the people who pay the bills. That must be the goal.
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