City has mismanaged Forest Park pool for decades

Forest Park pool has been operated by the City of Everett for 47 years. In those 47 years it has spent millions upon millions of taxpayer money to keep the pool operational. In 47 years the city has been given every opportunity to improve upon the management of the pool but with very limited success (“Future of long-shuttered Forest Park pool to get deep-dive study,” The Herald, May 3.)

So why did Forest Park pool have such high operating costs. It is poor management.

My question is who has been held accountable for these subsidies. No one! Not the mayor, city council, park administrators, or pool managers; none has ever been held accountable.

“Due to public health and economic impacts of COVID-19, the Forest Park Swim Center is closed until further notice.” This is the statement and reason Forest Park pool is currently closed on it’s website. It is also a total lie. It should state, “Due to the budget deficit and poor management the pool will be closed until further notice.”

In the recent article by the Everett Herald it states, ” Being just over 1 mile away from the new pool at the Everett Family YMCA has been a factor in that decision.” This didn’t seem to be much of a concern of the mayor or the city council when they gave $2.4 million dollars of your taxpayer funds to build the YMCA pool. You would think that would be a conflict of interest. The city could have spent the same amount of money improving Forest Park pool by adding an indoor spray pool and add an instructional pool for lessons.

After 47 years of poor management it is my opinion the City of Everett should not be given the opportunity to operate the pool in the future. The city has neither the skill or knowledge to operate a pool.

So what should happen to Forest Park pool? First fire those administrators who allowed the pool subsidies to get out of control. All managers should be replaced by managers, outside the city. Managers who have proven skill and knowledge of running a large pool facility especially skilled in swim lesson, and lifeguard development. If not save the $92,000 on the contract study and bulldoze the pool.

Steven Lay

Everett

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THis is an editorial cartoon by Michael de Adder . Michael de Adder was born in Moncton, New Brunswick. He studied art at Mount Allison University where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in drawing and painting. He began his career working for The Coast, a Halifax-based alternative weekly, drawing a popular comic strip called Walterworld which lampooned the then-current mayor of Halifax, Walter Fitzgerald. This led to freelance jobs at The Chronicle-Herald and The Hill Times in Ottawa, Ontario.

 

After freelancing for a few years, de Adder landed his first full time cartooning job at the Halifax Daily News. After the Daily News folded in 2008, he became the full-time freelance cartoonist at New Brunswick Publishing. He was let go for political views expressed through his work including a cartoon depicting U.S. President Donald Trump’s border policies. He now freelances for the Halifax Chronicle Herald, the Toronto Star, Ottawa Hill Times and Counterpoint in the USA. He has over a million readers per day and is considered the most read cartoonist in Canada.

 

Michael de Adder has won numerous awards for his work, including seven Atlantic Journalism Awards plus a Gold Innovation Award for news animation in 2008. He won the Association of Editorial Cartoonists' 2002 Golden Spike Award for best editorial cartoon spiked by an editor and the Association of Canadian Cartoonists 2014 Townsend Award. The National Cartoonists Society for the Reuben Award has shortlisted him in the Editorial Cartooning category. He is a past president of the Association of Canadian Editorial Cartoonists and spent 10 years on the board of the Cartoonists Rights Network.
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