If Sumner School District officials don’t receive an inviting proposal from a management company by Friday, the pool at Sumner High School could face closure by the end of August.
The district issued a request for proposals in April, seeking an outside manager to take on operations of the indoor pool.
The pool is the only one in the district and offers a venue for swimming lessons and water sports. The district’s swim and water polo programs use the pool, as does the USA Swimming team the South Sound Titans.
It also operates at a loss of more than $100,000 a year, according to district spokeswoman Ann Cook.
“Pools are very expensive to maintain,” she said. “With the latest budget cuts, we have to look at our options.”
An income and expense report shows a loss of more than $167,000 from September 2008 to August 2009. The pool has already lost more than $93,000 since September 2009. Outside management would allow the district to unload the pool’s liability costs and keep its water programs.
The district may consider releasing another request for proposals if there are no viable candidates by Friday, Cook said.
But the same situation posed to Craig Spencer resulted in the assistant superintendent confirming the pool would be closed if an outside manager couldn’t be found, South Sound Titans Board Member Scott Anderson said.
Anderson recently sent a letter to Bonney Lake Mayor Neil Johnson to educate him about the pool situation and argue for its importance to the community.
Anderson and Titans Coach Shawn Jones criticized the manner in which the district has solicited its request for proposals, citing a short deadline for proposal submissions and unattractive operation restrictions on potential managers.
“(The district wants) management companies to operate the pool the way they operate it,” Jones said. “If they’ve operated at a loss, it kind of defeats the purpose of bringing in a new manager.”
Titans board members met Thursday evening to put together their own proposal to take on management operations. Expenses and all, the endeavor could be worth it, at least until the YMCA and its pool open in town, Anderson said.
“Look, I get it,” he said. “The school district has been strapped with an unfair weight on its back in operating this pool. But it’s not just their pool. Other communities have realized this and pulled from other resources to keep pools open as a community property.”
But Anderson also feared the district was using the request for proposal to go through the motions to cover themselves before closing the pool, he said.
“I can’t say they haven’t followed the letter of the law in putting out the RFP,” he said. “But I think the way they’ve gone about it is discouraging to bidders.”
