The Southside Park Pool is closed — still. What’s it going to take to open it for kids?
Dave Walter, a contractor who has resurfaced four Sacramento pools, received a call in June, 2023, asking him to take a walk-through of the Southside Pool. He sensed some urgency.
“When I got to the pool there was some kind of ceremony on the front steps with a giant check,” he said.
The ceremony that Walter saw was Kevin McCarty, former assemblyman and current mayoral candidate, presenting that giant check to repair the city’s only central city pool, which has been closed since 2021.
“There’s hope around the corner, light at the end of the tunnel,” said McCarty, flanked by city leaders at a news conference that day. “We’re able to deliver from the state budget, $500,000 ... to start the process to construct it, open it back up next summer.”
Walter did not end up bidding on the job to repair the pool that is is over 70 years old. But he said what he has observed since then has made him scratch his head.
“The planning just seems like it has never matched the sense of urgency,” he said.
Next summer has come and gone.
What was called a pool resurfacing project did not start in earnest until July, more than a year after McCarty’s big check arrived.
When the project finally commenced city officials said, that to make up for the late opening, they would keep the pool open after Labor Day.
But as Sacramento has sweltered with record-shattering triple digit heat in October, the pool is still closed. Just what it will take to fix the pool and when it will open is not known.
Still not resurfaced
Nearly $400,000 of taxpayer funds has already been spent and the pool has yet to be resurfaced.
Ken Moeller is an expert in municipal pool construction and renovation projects, licensed architect and president of Arch Pac Aquatics. He warned the city two years ago when assessed that the pool was “in very rough shape.”
He said that underneath the ground of any renovation project you would almost certainly find badly deteriorated pipes.
Moeller said he had been involved in hundreds of municipal pool and construction projects in California. “I did a project for the City of San Jose schools,” he said. “We updated 17 pools that are around the same vintage as Southside. I’ll never forget when we got to those pipes, they just crumpled in your hands.”
Moeller estimated that the pool needed $1.3 million in work.
“And that was a low number,” he said.
He said he was pressured to leave substantial work off his estimate because he was told the city just couldn’t afford it.
“What I had in there was bare bones, the work needed to make the pool safe,” he said. “I told them to have some kind of contingency in place because they were likely to find problems.”
Told the project started in July with a far more limited $600,000 budget and planned to open by September, Moeller said: “That would have taken a miracle.”
‘True cost of deferred maintenance’
A miracle did not happen.
The city communicated to the Southside Park Community organization on Aug. 30: “Public Works has informed us of a change needed to the Southside Pool repairs. Multiple attempts to fix the leaks in the return lines have revealed a large section of the line is too degraded and needs to be replaced. To address this, a segment of the deck will need to be removed to install a replacement return line, and then that segment of the concrete deck replaced.”
On her Instagram page Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela posted photos of crumbling pipes.
“Southside Park Pool is an unfortunate example of the true cost of deferred maintenance,” she wrote. “When we deprioritize regular park maintenance in our budget we compound the monetary consequences and there is a very real cost to the communities. Our parks shouldn’t be an afterthought, and this will stand as an example of why maintaining our parks and pools is so key to keeping a vibrant city.”
Residents and community organizations, including those who work with underprivileged youth ,expressed hurt, frustration and anger.
“We are also battling apathy, “ said Sarah Cox, the vice president of the Southside Park Community Association. “We have written so many letters and attended so many meetings.”
Cox said at the next community meeting her organization will discuss whether they will ask the Sacramento City auditor to investigate the Southside Pool project.
“We have a lot of questions,” Cox said. “The city has spent hundreds of thousands on upgrades at the Clunie Pool in East Sac so that lap swim could be extended, and completed projects at other pools around the city. Why did we have to wait for state funds and why has this project been so poorly executed?
“It’s difficult not to come to the conclusion that it’s because the area around the park has a different socio-economic population.”
Kenneth Duncan, the founder of the Ball Out basketball academy, which primarily serves youth in central city housing projects in the Upper Land Park neighborhood, said he is also frustrated that the pool remains closed.
“Someone does not understand that we are talking primarily about poor black kids with nowhere to go,” he said. “This feels like it is evolving into a civil rights issue.”
Duncan said that the pool not being open has added to a summer of despair that has overflowed with tension and tragedy for the community that lives near the pool.
Danni Partridge, a college bound 18-year-old, was killed, and Sofia, an 8-year-old girl, whose two sisters Duncan coached, suffered a brain injury in a July shooting.
No set date
City spokeswoman Gabby Miller said that the city had worked with Valenzuela’s office to distribute 350 free swim passes this summer to the community that could be used at city pools.
“Clunie and McClatchy are the closest pools in the area,” she said. “In addition, admission to McClatchy Pool was free this summer for youth and families as part of a grant program.”
Cox, who has four children, said that at the start of the summer she intended to take her family to other pools. But, she said, piling kids into a car can be hard.
“And for kids from more challenging backgrounds, that could be a very challenging trip,” she said.
Confusion reigns about the status of the project, and when and if the pool will open. Valenzuela said that more than a million dollars has been set aside in a district budget for the Southside project.
“An exact date of completion is not currently available,” Miller said. “We will continue to work with the current contractor and the original project budget has sufficient funds to cover the necessary repairs.”
But when asked what that budget is, Miller stated that an additional $10,828.08 was added in change orders, bringing the total to $605,749.08.
Miller did not respond to multiple requests to provide any change orders to show what work existing funds will cover.
The Bee also asked through Miller, if City Manager Howard Chan would promise that the Southside Pool would open by next summer, two years after McCarty delivered his big check.
Miller responded: “The City is committed to repairing the pool with the goal to use next summer.”
