Don’t make Wichita pool closings so final

Perhaps the most difficult decision an elected official can make is to cut spending for something that benefits the community.

An example would be the drying up of Wichita’s pools, particularly in the northeast section of the city.

The city’s plan is to eliminate by 2023 all but the three pools with the most usage — Aley (southwest Wichita), College Hill (east central) and Harvest (far west) are the best-attended pools. Edgemoor and McAdams pools have already closed, and five more will be closed over six years.

Many kids have pool options, which have contributed to a decline in the use of city pools. Four YMCAs have popular water parks that include swimming areas. Membership pools dot the city, too.

Low-cost city options are disappearing, making way for splash parks that spray fountains of water. They’re free and open later than pools.

But you can’t swim there. That’s a weakness. Kids seem to outgrow fountain fun by 9 or 10 years old, too. Another weakness.

Then there’s the geography involved. Of the eight city pools and seven splash parks open this summer, one – the splash pad in Fairmount Park – is north of Douglas and east of I-135.

An entire quadrant of Wichita is without a city pool.

Many children, particularly in northeast Wichita, will lose their best option for learning how to swim. There’s no doubt that the younger a child grows comfortable in the water, the more likely he or she will learn to swim and want to return to the water.

Yet council members have had to face facts. Swimmers didn’t go to McAdams much when the pool was open. The city says McAdams had the lowest revenue of any city pool in 2016.

This is where it gets fiscally tough, though there’s no city ordinance that says a city pool has to break even.

There were moments of support for reopening pools at Tuesday’s City Council meeting. Members Janet Miller and Lavonta Williams opposed the original Parks Department pool plan and were the only votes earlier in the summer to keep more pools open.

Williams, who represents the council district with the two closed pools, is in her last year on the council because of term limits. The two candidates in November’s general election for her job have differing views on pools.

Brandon Johnson, who got 52 percent of the vote in the Aug. 1 primary, has said he’d like to see the McAdams pool open and develop the neighborhood around the park to make it more of a destination.

Mike Kinard, who got 22 percent of the primary vote, agrees with the city’s decision to close McAdams because of lack of usage.

Mayor Jeff Longwell is against McAdams reopening because it is cut off from the community it serves by I-135 and industrial areas to the north and west. He’d like to see more research into another northeast option.

The research needs to happen, and quickly. Many low-income kids don’t get a chance to be in the water, and all parts of the city are someday going to lose an essential piece of growing up.

This story was originally published August 4, 2017 at 5:52 PM with the headline "Don’t make Wichita pool closings so final."