With the growing possibility that City Manager O'Brien will replace Worcester's nine neighborhood pools with three $2.3M pools, community members continue to look for ways to help save our pools. The following reviews events concerning pools that have taken place over the last year, and the work that Save Our Poolz has done in defense of Worcester's pools. For more information, email saveourpoolz@gmail.com.
Pre-July, 2008: Save Our Poolz continues to advocate for safe/repaired neighborhood pools, doors on bathroom stalls, and extended swim season and daily swim hours, and the repair of Holmes Field Pool.
July 3, 2008: Late on the eve of July 4th weekend, City Manager O'Brien releases an aquatics master plan which recommends that all city pools be demolished. Rebuilding is proposed for Kendrick, East Park, Greenwood, Beaver Brook and South Worcester. Sprinkler Parks are suggested at Crompton, Holmes Field, and Tacoma. The administration suggests that Crystal Park be paved over forever. SOP notes that three of the four neighborhoods on the pools “chopping block” have some of the highest poverty levels in the city.
July, 2008: SOP decides to advocate for public hearings at all nine pools across the city before any action is taken on Council floor regarding pools. SOP writes, calls, emails and talks face-to-face with Councilor Germain, chair of Youth Parks & Recreation Committee that will hold public hearings. Over a dozen organizations throughout the city send letters requesting hearings to Councilor Germain.
August 6, 2008: After almost a month of silence, and one day before a SOP press conference, Germain responds to SOP’s requests and agrees to hold six public hearings in neighborhoods!
August 7, 2008: SOP holds a press conference at Tacoma Street Pool marking the last ten days of Tacoma Street pool ever being opened, attended by 40-50 people. In the days immediately preceding the P.C., the city puts doors on the stalls of the bathrooms at Tacoma Street Pool! Bathroom stalls at many other city pools remain door-less, toilet seat-less, and toilet paper-less.
September-October, 2008: SOP meets with most City Councilors to advocate for nine safe, swimmable neighborhood pools and against expensive pools or sprinkler-parks.
October 25, 2008: Green Island throws a Save Our Poolz Block Party! 400+ in attendance! Many new connections made, and the desire for neighborhood pools over sprinkler parks is again voiced.
November, 2008: SOP continues to ask Councilor Germain about public hearings, requesting that hearings be held in neighborhoods with pools, at 6:00 p.m. or later, and with at least three weeks’ advanced notice sent out to the SOP mailing list. Despite several letters and emails sent, no response is received from Councilor Germain.
December 19, 2008: SOP and Senator Augustus, champion of Shine Pool renovation, co-host a legislative breakfast at the Worcester Youth Center. Over a dozen organizations are represented, and half a dozen local and state representatives attend, reaffirming the importance of neighborhood, swimmable pools in Worcester.
February 2, 2009: After seven months without a single YP&R Committee meeting and several pending items from SOP, Councilor Germain calls a meeting at noon on a Monday with five days’ notice! At the close of the meeting, Councilors begin to suggest public hearing times and locations that do not meet SOP’s request. Members of SOP insist that hearings must happen in central, accessible community spaces at evening times when working people can attend.
February 18, 2009: In the midst of winter, Councilor Germain finally announces the public hearing schedule!
March 2, 2009: A nor’easter hits Worcester on the day of the first scheduled public Poolz hearing. After a week of doing outreach in the area, SOP decides it will be too difficult and dangerous for people to attend, and agrees to reschedule.
March 4, 2009: At the last minute, the location of the second public hearing is changed due to handicap inaccessibility. SOP quickly switches gears and sets up a van-pool from the original location. Despite a same-day location change, the first public hearing draws over 80 attendees!
March-April, 2009: Six public hearings, as requested by SOP, are held across the city in neighborhoods with pools. Over 500 residents attend, representing over two dozen organizations, and giving over 10 hours of testimony supporting basic, swimmable neighborhood pools, rejecting sprinkler-parks, and calling on our public officials to work with the community to achieve a goal of nine pools for the city of Worcester! Additionally, residents demanded that Worcester's pools be open in the summer of 2009. The people spoke!
March 31, 2009: City Manager O’Brien announces that pools will not be opened for the summer of 2009 due to budget cuts. SOP immediately begins brainstorming a plan to keep pools open this summer.
April, 2009: SOP begins conversations with Councilor Germain about the possibility of a “Task-force for Nine” to address the pools issue over the long term. SOP agrees that, given the current economic crisis, the City cannot afford to build nine pools on its own. Instead, SOP envisions a City task-force made up of community members, business representatives, elected officials and non-profit leaders committed to finding creative ways, including fund-raising and public-private partnerships, to rebuild all of Worcester's pools over the long term.
May 7, 2009: Councilor Smith confirms with SOP that a “basic, swimmable” pool design will be presented at the next YP&R Committee meeting.
April-May, 2009: SOP initiates another round of meetings with all City Councilors to present “the math” that shows how pools can be opened in the summer of 2009 by using a combination of state youth jobs funding and private sources. With prompting from SOP, Councilor Haller negotiates with WCAC to free up youth jobs money for lifeguard expenses, reducing the cost of opening pools by $270K; Councilor Toomey begins conversations with Unions for in-kind donations of labor toward pools repairs; and Councilor Rushton makes contact with an individual who agrees to fund-raise the remaining $140K needed to open pools. Things are looking good!
May 15, 2009: Matt Sanchez donates all proceeds from his CD release party to Worcester’s pools, marking the first pools fundraiser!
May 18, 2009: Councilor Smith submits orders to the City Manager requesting him to report on which pools are safe enough to open this summer, and how much they would cost to open safely. Still time to save the summer of 09!
May 27, 2009: After deeming eight pools as safe enough to open one year ago, City Manager O’Brien declares that no municipal pool is in safe enough condition to open. O'Brien does not produce any report detailing the cost of making the pools safe enough to open, as requested by Councilor Smith. Despite a large surge of phone-calls, letters, emails from constituents asking them to keep safe pools open, Councilors approve O’Brien’s declaration. O’Brien also announces his plan to spend $200K on busing children to beaches and indoor pools for the summer.
June 3, 2009: Two months after the last public hearing, the YP&R Committee meets to review pool design options presented by the City’s consultants. With just 24 hours’ notice, over 50 residents attend the meeting. Consultants present two pool options: a $2.3M “Taj Majal” pool, and a $750K sprinkler park. Kendrick Field and East Park are again suggested as sites for the new pools, despite community demands that Crystal Park be prioritized. Attendees are surprised, confused and angered that the “basic, swimmable” pool they had requested was completely left out of the presentation.
NOW: Save Our Poolz reflects on the last year of work. Despite a growing sense that the democratic process is being undermined by actions of the Council and City Manager, Save Our Poolz continues to strategize and work to save our city’s valuable municipal pools. New, creative ideas for encouraging a rich and transparent democratic process in our local government are born each day. YOU can still get involved! There is STILL time to SAVE OUR POOLZ! For more information, email saveourpoolz@gmail.com
Get a life and learn how budgets actually work
You are all delusional! You requested $2 million per pool a few short months ago and now you balk that 2.3 million per BRAND NEW POOL is the "taj mahal". And somehow $200k to bus poor kids to indoor pools and beaches isn't good enough. You are both full of shit and have no idea how budgets or reality operate. Stop masturbating on indymedia--which is now basically Cha Cha and Kevin's blog--and spend some time in the real world. There's a reason that Kevin Ksen is nearly 50 years old and isn't even a member of public office--he's too crazy and incompetent to do anything other than rile up unstable 20-somethings and college students. Stop wasting you and everyone else's time with this bullshit.
Editorial Policy?
This was hidden. Based on the principles listed on the about page, I don't think that should have happened. It's not illegal or a threat. It's not a duplicate, spam, off-topic, or commercial. It's just an old fashioned nasty flame. That's what the Internet is about.
Reading the recent Poolz articles posted here caused me to have a similar WTF gut reaction. I decided to delete my posts, but our Anonymous coward has to decide if she's going to delete this, not the editors.
Can you read?
The article is by Stephanie Katz, who worked really hard on it. Not by Cha-Cha or Kevin.
At SOP, we have always asked for the most basic, most fiscally responsible pool we can get that looks like what we have now but is up to ADA and drainage code. We want more bang for our buck. At the time that we were asking for $2 million dollar pools, we were being told by the City administration that this was the cheapest possible pool option. We now know that this is not true, and have repeatedly asked for neighborhood sized models since.
It's shocking to me, personally, that after 6 public hearings and over 500 people asking for basic, affordable pools, the City is planning to go ahead with three pools that won't serve the original purpose of neighborhood-based, accessible pools, and are completely unaffordable.
The $200K that is now going to be used for a busing program that (a) based on past busing program experience is likely to fail and (b)will by-and-large fail to address those children who are not already in programs run by non-profits, is money that could have gone toward opening at least one neighborhood pool, and possibly more by using matching grants. That would have been better than a busing program.
Learn to read, watch the news, and stop wasting my and everyone else's time with this bullshit.
$2 million dollar pools
Save Our Poolz did ask for $18 million over nine years for nine pools. It's not clear whether or not the $2 million per pool includes maintenance, staffing, etc. for nine years. Anonymous Coward has a point. You can't call $2.3 million a "Taj Majal"[sic] and not expect people to point that out. Someone, please, clarify all of these numbers.
http://worcester.indymedia.org/node/37308
Submitted by pdmt99 on Mon, 08/25/2008 - 16:25
"We are requesting an extension of his five year, $2 million dollar a year commitment, to a nine year, $2 million dollar a year commitment. This would mean that in 9 years all 9 pools could be rebuilt."
UPDATE: I spent some time reading the City Manager's report that Kevin references above: http://worcester.indymedia.org/node/32183
Quoting it: "I have committed to reinvesting approximately $2M per year to the Parks, Recreation and Cemetery Division from our total $17M capital borrowing cap for the next five years exclusively for the improvements to our City pools, beaches, spray facilities and parks."
So, the proposed $2M per pool that Save Our Pools wanted to extend from five pools to nine pools was exclusively for capital improvements. The original plan included one pool and one spray park in each of five districts. I can't figure out how Save Our Poolz extended that over nine years to get nine pools and no spray parks. I'm not sure where the maintenance money would have come from.
Now, I'm totally confused.
From the author
Hi Anonymous, and Nick,
This is Stephanie, who wrote the article. It sounds like you both are pretty well decided in how you feel about SOP, but I'd just like to add a few pieces of food for thought...
-Regarding changes in pools requests, I think we all understand that no activism, organizing, advocacy or negotiation happens in a vacuum. It's true that our requests have changed somewhat over the past year, but that has been in response to a changing economy, changes in proposals by the administration, and new information we've found about the feasibility of less expensive pools (which we asked the administration for, but was never researched or presented).
-Regarding Nick's questions about dollar amounts: Thanks for pointing out the holes in my reporting. Those are important details that are needed to complete the picture here. A year ago, we began requesting an extension of the Administration's plan to 9 years based on an assurance by the City Manager that these were the cheapest pools that could be built. So, at that time, we were still just asking for more pools at the price quoted. Since then, we've discovered that these are on the very high end of available pool models, and have asked for "cheaper pool options" from the CM, the Commissioner of Parks, and all of the City Council. We have yet to be given that option, so now we call these pools "Taj Mahal" pools to highlight the fact that they are unnecessarily expensive.
The maintenance issue is an important one, and one that the City Manager continues to point out as the biggest road-block. We're asking for commitment from Council to find creative ways, such as an endowment, to help cover those costs. It's not totally worked out yet, but I think most importantly we feel that without a commitment to try, it won't be worked out ever. And if each neighborhood pool's constituency is asking to keep its pool (which they are), and no effort is being made by Council to retain all nine, then where is the democratic process in all this?
-Regarding the editorial policy, I would just chime in that Worcester Indymedia's mission says that it's a "progressive outlet committed to amplifying the voices of everyday people and especially those working for justice and equality in central mass and around the world". As a first-time poster (and a young female) I will be honest and say that I'm a little taken aback by the tone and language of anonymous, and will try not to let this make me think twice before i post again (tho I can't say it won't). Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that Indymedia is more about promoting respectful dialogue and giving voice to those doing social justice work, esp those most un-heard, than it is about universal anti-censorship. I think the intention of this poster was to intimidate myself and others from reporting on the work we are doing, which in effect works against IM's mission, rather than engaging in thoughtful, respectful debate about a local issue. I'm not saying I think the post should be hidden, but that it's a conversation to have.
In solidarity and respect, that's what I got!
What the internet is all about
Good points Stephanie. Thanks for clarifying all of that.
The kind of demeaning, sexist, ignorant crap that "anonymous" felt the need to inflict upon us all in the first comment is actually NOT what the internet is all about. It is what a certain subset of conservative right-wingers with no respect for the voices of young women are about. These comments are designed to silence our voices. I don't see why WoIndy's supposedly "progressive" editorial policy should encourage them.
As Bikini Kill once sang,
"I'm so sorry that I'm alienating some of you.
Your f*cking culture alienates me."
"respect for the voices of young women"
So, women are somehow more likely to be intimidated by insults than men? I'm a woman, and I'm deeply insulted by that. It's cunts like you that give feminists a bad name.
Saying women are easily intimidated by insults is against everything Bikini Kill stood for. Suck My Left One! Your fucking culture alienates ME.
What's your problem?
It's obviously personal.
Right, right, right, right...
... because referring to me as an "unstable 20-something" and then later as a "cunt" is DEFINITELY what feminism and Bikini Kill are all about.
I guess you don't care much for the women and girls who are looking at summer without accessible activities for their families and kids, either.
Or for the women trying to promote positive youth activities, and end stereotypes of and violence in our neighborhoods. Or for the activists, many of them WOMEN, who end up having to deal with the fallout of NOT having those opportunities and activities.
I guess public health in the inner city doesn't matter to you - we've had enough nurses from UMASS and Family Health (all of them women) show up to the hearings to testify that no pools is serious bad news for public health and kids in Worcester. But hey, what do you care, right?
Personally, I don't see how anyone could live in the inner city in Worcester, interact with children, youth, and families, and imagine that having no pools this summer is going to work out. But then, maybe you don't interact with those of us who are going to be most impacted.
I guess you think we're all just idiots who can't read a budget.
Speaking of available dollars in Worcester - the non-existent City Square costs $564 million, and has yet to appear downtown. I don't really see any evidence that City Square is going to benefit working and poor families and youth in our inner city neighborhoods - but traditionally, we are a constituency that hasn't counted for very much at City Hall.
My point is that the budget is impacted by the economy... but ultimately, how it reads is determined by the City Administration's priorities.
But perhaps you think those priorities shouldn't include poor and working women and children.
Save Our Poolz is going to change that. Save Our Poolz is strong because of the participation of HUNDREDS of working and poor people living in neighborhoods - many, MANY of them women and children - who are reclaiming their voice at City Hall, many for the first time. Sounds pretty damn feminist and empowered to me.
But hey - I guess your kind of feminist doesn't have to give a crap about other women. Or maybe you seriously believe that SOP is the pet project of myself and a few others... in which case, I'd have to ask you which rock you've been living under.
For the record... Bikini Kill were activists. I'm proud to continue on that road.
My Experiences with Sexism
I wrote the second anonymous post. I did not write the first post. I go to college in Worcester, but my parents live in New Jersey. I wrote the post with that tone to show that a woman could have an angry tone, but there was real emotion to inspire it.
I was involved in the peace group in my home town. At one of the meetings, one of the men spoke loudly and took an aggressive tone. He never insulted women or a specific woman. He directly insulted a couple of the other guys in the group. A woman got offended and declared that because she was offended, the speech was offensive to all women. I spoke up and said that I couldn't see how it was aimed at women, and that I wasn't offended. (I grew up with three brothers --real dude's dudes.) For that, I was called sexist by the entire group. That really hurt me. It made feel like I'm not a proper woman somehow because I communicate aggressively sometimes. Real women have to be polite and proper. Now I see those feelings were irrational, and I was just experiencing sexism.
Please, don't call people sexist if they're not being sexist. It breeds resentment against feminists. Being angry isn't being sexist. If you want to make a rule that the tone on your blog needs to be respectful, that's cool, but don't do it in the name of protecting women. Women can take care of themselves.
math lesson
You're proud that you have hundreds of people on your side? Worcester has a population of about 175,000. You have maybe half of a percent of the population. That's less than the margin of error in most polls.
How long have you been working on this? I could go out today and get more signatures from people who think we should round up all the Mexicans and kill them.
-- The Fox News and Right-wing crowd
Small groups can make a big difference
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever does," so said anthropologist Margaret Mead.
And when Cesar Chavez organized the nation-wide boycott of non-union grapes he stated, "If 11% of the population supports the boycott, we win."
Politicians know that for every letter or email they receive on an issue there are 10 more people who support the same position.
I have been following the work being done by Save Our Poolz. You are doing a great job of grass-roots organizing to acoomplish something positive for kids who will really benefit from this needed recreational resource. Keep up the great work. I think your latest plan for multiple, smaller pools in neighborhoods (reported in T&G) is a good approach.
As a long-time volunteer with the Indian Lake Watershed Association. I am glad to see that kids can use the swimming beaches on the lake but I am very concerned about the problems with sewage overflow into the lake (and consequent high bacteria counts) following heavy rain storms. We at the ILWA have been working hard to improve the water quality on the lake. What we're up against now is the very costly problem of eventually upgrading the sewage system in the city. Because of this systemic problem, the City's plan to utilize the beaches (instead of building needed pools) is really not a responsible, realistic solution. One major thunderstorm (and we've had plenty of them this summer!) and the bacteria count goes up and the kids can't swim in the lake for a day or two.
Finding the needed money is simply a matter of priority-setting for city leaders. By investing in healthy recreation for kids in the summertime we are recognizing the importance of our youth and we are de-escalating some factors that lead to violent confrontations (boredom and lack of fun, physical exercise). It's not THE answer but it's a small step in the right direction. What better investment in our future?
Re: Small groups can make a big difference
So, you agree 500 is a tiny group
Re: Small groups can make a big difference
stop being an asshole
Guys, guys calm down, you
Guys, guys calm down, you both have your opinions, nobody's right or wrong.
Need to register a UK company?
www.accounting-on-line.com
Actually...
Can't let that one slide.
Actually, some of us are wrong. Specifically, people who advocate rounding up a group of people based on race/ethnicity and killing them are wrong. And racist. (See above comment from "Fox News and Right Wing Crowd").
Secondly, this is not an appropriate place to advertise for "registering a company in the UK." That's spam, and it's annoying.
Is anyone moderating this place? Seriously, the spam is a problem, but when the "Fox News and Right Wing Crowd," whoever he is, can just post his racist crap ad nauseum and no one says anything, how do you think it makes people feel who fall into said race / ethnic group? NOT like this is an anti-racist space, would be my guess.
Re: Actually...
Learn to read.
"Fox News" was making a point that violent racism is more popular in Worcester than neighborhood swimming pools. You're supposed to be shocked that people would support a petition to "round up all the Mexicans and kill them." He's not suggesting it's a good idea.
The sad thing is, dude is probably right.
clarification
Thanks for making this clear. I do think we should round up all the Mexicans and kill them, but that wasn't the point of my previous post.
-- The Fox News and Right-wing crowd