USA Swimming team South Sound Titans challenged the validity of its contract with Sumner/Bonney Lake Aquatics to use the pool on Sumner High’s campus. The private team claimed, at the February Sumner school board meeting, their contract with SBLA guarantees five swim lanes and that they have only been allowed four in practice.
Early word from the Titans suggest they may be preparing to sign on to a new three-lane contract offered by SBLA manager Diana Ekstrom.
“I would be one to say (Diana’s) done a great job (taking over the pool),” Titans Vice President Todd Atkins said at the school board meeting. “Unfortunately we have had some negotiation problems.
“Our contract is for five lanes. We have four lanes. We have not had the option to sit down (and renegotiate).”
Atkins said the Titans would be willing to go down to four lanes if they were able to renegotiate the terms of the contract.
Negotiations have since gone underway; tentatively.
SBLA manager Diana Ekstrom counters the Titans’ practice attendance doesn’t justify the space, and reserving the lanes would make her business model unsustainable by cutting into revenues from in-house swim lessons. Furthermore, repeatedly late payments on the Titans’ lane lease constitutes a breach of contract on their part, Ekstrom said.
“They didn’t pay on time three out of the six months they have used the pool,” she said. “Plus, there are empty lanes all the time because they have 26 swimmers on their team, whereas I have 144 (swim students).”
Ekstrom’s company was awarded management of the Sumner pool in August, turning the campus facility into a privately operated company. That status grants SBLA a certain amount of sovereignty—school board director Richard Hendricks reminded Atkins that the board did not have the authority to intervene on a contract disagreement—and requires the business to maintain profitability to keep its head above water.
SBLA’s expenses—$13,909—presently exceed its $12,672 income, according to figures given by Ekstrom. The Titans’ rental rate is $2,400 per month.
“We take offense at the implication we’re ‘low-profit lessons,'” Atkins said. “We’re high profit. We pay $2,400 in, and the pool has to provide zero staff, and has zero expenditures, whereas they have to provide staff for their lessons.”
Ekstrom countered the claim the pool couldn’t survive without the Titans’ patronage with a business plan should they choose not to re-up their contract: Open up two lanes for lap swims at $5 a head during lessons (an apparently popular request among swim student parents), use Friday nights for open swim and private lessons at a $5 open rate and $25 private lesson rate, and add six more six-student classes at $62 a head. The plan would bring in an estimated $2,512. Alternatively, there are other swim clubs willing to take up only three lanes that have approached SBLA, Ekstrom said.
On Friday Feb. 24, Ekstrom provided the Titans her final offer: Three lanes for three hours—at $11.25 per hour—on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, Fridays at $135 plus staff costs for the whole pool, and three lanes for two-and-a-half hours on Tuesdays. The offer would cost the Titans $2,553.69 in March, $2,373.69 in April, and $2,559.30 in May. A $25 late fee would be charged for rent paid after the third of each month.
The Titans discussed the offer at their Friday board meeting. Titans President Lance Lindsley wrote in an email from out of country that the Titans had reviewed the plan, made a minor adjustment, and will likely sign on to the new terms.
