The South Valley Middle School pool is set to sink without a trace beneath a tidal wave of concrete this summer, following a year of back-and-forth banter between the City and the Gilroy Unified School District over whether and how to keep the facility open.
Negotiations between GUSD and City Council over who could pay for what in order to keep the beleaguered 1950s pool open entered choppier waters around November 2012, when the estimated price tag for repairs and maintenance reached $621,850.
As far back as last summer, the GUSD Board had already decided it could only afford to chip in $86,000 – the cost of getting rid of the pool altogether.
“We couldn’t do it,” board trustee Mark Good asserted. “We were standing there with our pockets turned out.”
In 2007, a joint operating agreement between the City and the school district expired after 50 years. The agreement stipulated that SVMS pool operating costs were to be shared, with GUSD paying 75 percent and the City paying 25. Without this historical framework to bind both parties, the City and GUSD were left to barter over the pool’s costs. Ultimately, GUSD decided not to ask the City to pay for a three-year lifeline for the pool. Gage reported this to Council members in March.
“It’s going to be buried,” he concluded.
Now, the future of the SVMS pool – which for many summers has been enjoyed by the surrounding area’s families as an inexpensive and popular recreation past time – is finally crystal clear as GUSD makes plans to fill it in sometime this summer at a cost of $86,000.
“It’s sad that it’s dragged on for so long,” said Good. “In a perfect world it would be great to keep it open.”
The saga of the South Valley Middle School Pool has waned on since the beginning of 2012 . Taking away from what former Mayor Al Pinheiro once argued is an “underserved” area, or, the east side – while families living in Gilroy’s west side enjoy easy access to a brand new, state-of-the-art $3.8 million aquatic facility constructed last year on the Christopher High School Campus – hit home with hundreds of people and prompted dozens of opinion letters, online comments, web polls and editorials in the Gilroy Dispatch print and online editions.
Taking the pool out of the landscape is a mistake, says Melissa Avila-Carroll, a local parent who has followed the issue closely.
“It’s frustrating,” she insists. “There’s got to be a way through this.”
And there is, according to Mayor Don Gage – but in a slightly different form: To compensate for the removal of the only pool on the east side, a water feature – like many in urban settings around the nation where children can run through fountains and geyser features to cool off – will be installed at San Ysidro Park, which abuts U.S. 101 at the end of Lewis Road.
City staff estimate the water feature could cost around $150,000. It won’t be built for another two years.
Councilwoman Cat Tucker, who was Mayor Pro Tempore when initial discussions about saving the pool surfaced, is pleased about the direction things are going in.
“I heard a few people in the community speak up and say they only wanted a pool at the school,” she recalled. “I don’t think it should be an ‘all-or-nothing’ attitude.”
The imagined price tag for the San Ysidro Park work is considerably less than the $620,000 price tag to get the SVMS pool up and running again, Gage pointed out.
With Gilroy’s sunny summers just around the corner, GUSD plans to bus east side residents for free over to the CHS Aquatics Center located on the northwest side of the city, or to the pool at Gilroy High School located on W. 10th Street to cool off, explained Superintendent Debbie Flores.
According to the Gilroy Recreation Department activity guide that started landing on doorsteps in the last two weeks, entry to the pool at CHS will cost $5 to $7 per person and an afternoon dip at GHS will cost $3 per person. The pool at South Valley Middle School used to charge a $2 entry fee during summer.
Avila-Carroll is only partially mollified by the promise of a San Ysidro Park water feature and regular bus rides to local high school pools.
“It’s great that they’re planning another water feature,” she remarked. “But it’s not going to get it done for a city the size of Gilroy.”
The demolition of the SVMS pool would, explained Avila-Carroll, will leave a whole section of Gilroy without access to a pool within walking distance. She wants to know why there can’t be a bond issue similar to the one that got Gilroy’s brand new municipal library on Sixth Street up and running.
“It’s a level of service that we need back,” she argues. “That’s why we pay our taxes and live here.”
As the only aquatic facility between Gilroy’s three junior highs, the SVMS pool was once enjoyed by the education and community sectors. South Valley offered a bi-weekly adaptive P.E. swim class for special education students, a P.E. swim class unit, and was used by the wrestling and cross country teams. It was also used as a city-run summer aquatics program that included lifeguard training, swim lessons and the Gilroy Gators – a competitive, nonprofit swim team headed by the Parks and Recreation Department.
Filling in a pool with such a storied history won’t be as simple as just pouring in some concrete, Flores explained.
“Do we have to mitigate for asbestos and lead?” she said, giving an example of possible hidden problems. “This pool is old and has been in constant disrepair.”
“Everyone (on the GUSD Board) is in consensus about getting rid of it,” she added.
GUSD’s next regular Board of Education meeting scheduled for April 25 will address the need for hazardous materials testing on the aging pool. The cost of filling in the pool this summer could rise if evidence of asbestos and lead paint is found.
While Good is cognizant of the anger and concern expressed by some residents who are sad to see the SVMS pool closing permanently, he reminds the public about GUSD’s financial panorama, which includes shaving more than $27 million from the district’s budget in the last five years. Most recently, the Santa Clara County Office of Education swooped in and took control of GUSD’s fiscal house because of problems with financial oversight.
“Our No. 1 concern needs to be the education of the children,” he said.
Good is especially aggrieved by the on average $8,000 a month expense GUSD incurred – for repairing or replacing malfunctioning equipment and emptying and re-filling the pool in the hunt for leaks – as it tried to keep the pool operational.
“It’s money that’s been spent by GUSD,” Good rued. “While we’re living in a van down by the river.”
