Seasonal Pass Purchases Needed to Float Public Pool

There are too many choices and too few incentives for swimmers to buy passes. That was the feedback the Recreation Commission got at its hearing Wednesday on the for the municipal pool, which the city is taking over for the first time this summer.

The city budget proposal released Monday includes $747,140 in spending for the pool in the next fiscal year. In what Recreation Director Mark Delventhal called a "somewhat conservative" estimate, the budget suggests the pool could bring in $375,000 to cover some of those costs; the rest would be made up by a general fund subsidy.

The trick, said city aquatics consultant Jeff Eorio, will be to tap the market of those who want to use the pool, but were not willing to pay the $1,500 initiation fee to join the Swim Club, which has been running the pool until now. In particular the trick will be to get those families to buy passes.

"The pass route is the most effective way for us to generate revenue and have access to the facility easily without having a line of kids waiting to pay a fee at the door," Eorio said.

Jon Sakol, who became intimately familiar with pool finances while negotiating for the Swim Club in its to continue managing the facility, agreed that selling passes to seasonal swimmers would be key. Only about a quarter of Swim Club members swam year round, Sakol told the commission.

"Families that came 20 to 30 times in the summer were forced to pay $825 [in annual dues]," he said.

But Sakol predicted none of those families would pay $850 for the equivalent resident annual family all access pass, which is just one of 35 different rates included in the fee menu the city has suggested.

The proposed $5 daily recreational swim fee for adults and $4 daily fee for children over 6 would allow a Piedmont family of four to get away with paying just $18 for an afternoon at the pool. That family would have to visit more than 47 times a year to realize any savings from buying an annual pass, and more than 25 times during the summer to make the $450 resident seasonal pass worth it.

Dan Harvitt all but asked the Recreation Commission to revise the fee schedule to make his family to buy a pass.

"I hate swimming, but I have a wife and kids and they probably want to go sometimes," Harvitt said, explaining that since his family aren't big swimmers, paying the Swim Club's initiation fee and hefty annual dues didn't make sense.

"I [am] a little concerned about the daily rate being too low–that it wouldn't force people like us to do a membership … so the pool has a set amount coming in," he said.

Sakol recommended that the city limit daily fee access in order to get more people to bite the bullet for a pass.

"I recognize that that is a heavy political lift. It goes against people's notion of a truly public pool," Sakol said. "But either the users of the pool are going to pay for its use or the taxpayers are going to subsidize it."

Delevnthal was intrigued by Sakol's ideas.

"They are somewhat contrary to public recreation. But I'm fond of saying there's the right way, the wrong way, and the Piedmont way. … It's not a typical pool for obvious reasons," Delventhal said, alluding to the fact that Piedmont's pool has been operated by private club since it opened in 1964.

But in deciding on what fee schedule to forward to City Council for approval, Delventhal advised the Recreation Commission to be somewhat more egalitarian.

"I don't think your primary task is to put together a fee schedule that limits the general fund subsidy," he said. "I think your primary task is to put together a fee schedule that as many people in the community as possible will embrace and participate in."

The commission will vote on a fee schedule recommendation May 18.

CORRECTION: This article has been updated to correct the math describing how many visits to the pool would make a seasonal or annual pass a bargain. A recreational visit to the pool for a family of four would cost $18, not $28, so it would take more than 47 visits to make an annual pass worthwhile, not 30 as previously stated, and it would take more than 25 visits to make a seasonal pass worthwile, not 16 as previously stated.