The pools will open. That's the news the
Cincinnati Recreation Commission announced in April, when a combination of public, private and community efforts motivated Cincinnati City Council to re-allocate funds to help open 19 city swimming pools this summer.
The story is likely familiar to anyone who follows the city's news media: near-historic budget problems in the city forced City Council to move for sweeping cuts, including closure of the city's pools. This provoked a grassroots movement from the city's neighborhoods, many of which began petition and fundraising drives to open their pools. As momentum grew across the city, additional sponsorship came in from larger community donors. And by an April 15 fundraising deadline, enough had been raised - and enough supporters had raised their voices - that city council voted to provide $600,000 to support the pools, with donations covering the slightly more than $200,000 needed to foot the rest of the bill for the pools' maintenance, security and staffing.
While moving that much money - especially five months after the city budget first came out - drew protest from fiscally conservative voices in the city, the story of the Cincinnati pools raises a bigger question, one that goes beyond the dollars, and transcends one department's effort to keep some of its services available to the community.
Could the drive that opened the pools be a model for how things can get done in Cincinnati?
"This is the first time I'm aware of the community taking such an active role," said CRC Superintendent of Recreation Michael Thomas. "This is a very healthy thing for the community."
Thomas suggests that what makes the multi-neighborhood funding drive unique is how it started. Once City Council announced the planned pool closure, he said, CRC held a series of meetings to explain the situation to community stakeholders. Transparency was paramount, he said; at the initial meetings he simply explained the amounts needed to keep each pool open for a season, ranging from about $25,000 to more than $40,000 per pool.
"So many times, decisions are made in the political arena and I don't think citizens get chance to talk to officials. When I did February meetings, there were tough questions," Thomas said.
More than a few of those questions had to do with the CRC's system of prioritizing pools in tiers: pools were classified by popularity, location in the city and cost, giving the commission a list of the pools it could most likely open with limited funds. Needless to say, the decisions behind the tiers came under scrutiny.
"I had people from neighborhoods [at the meeting] saying, 'my community's not represented.' That's a hard conversation, but that's ok," he said. "I had a couple of folks talk later and say they didn't really understand the scope of the problem until we talked."
And here, said Thomas, is where the situation began to take on a unique flavor. Rather than lobbying CRC for their own interests or competing with other neighborhoods to change the priorities of neighborhoods' pools, Cincinnati's residents went to the streets, raising funds and to open as many pools as possible. Children in Spring Grove Village
made a video asking for support for the Winton Woods' pool. Kids went door-to-door in Mt. Adams and Mt. Lookout, collecting spare change in coffee cans. A run in Saylor Park raised funds, and countless beach-themed parties were held, fliers were posted and neighborhood businesses were approached about donating.
The city-wide efforts netted more than $200,000 by April. A significant amount of money, but a fraction of the $800,000 it would take to open the pools. But the community efforts went far beyond fundraising. Supporters collected petition signatures along with spare change. Concerned residents attended City Council meetings, wrote letters and emailed their representatives. And news coverage of the fundraising efforts projected a message: this is a big issue for constituents.
One has to suspect that fundraising alone might not have swayed council to release more than half a million dollars for a recreation expense in these tight times. But the combined effect of the money, petitions and media blitz appears to have made it very clear to the city's lawmakers: Cincinnati wants its pools.
Could this suggest a new way of getting things done in Cincinnati? In a city notorious for taking its time to take action on large projects does the combination of good-faith fundraising and a citywide community voice improve the odds of enacting change? And if so, is this a new tool for community members wanting to make the city a better place to live
Cindy Sherding, a Northside resident with many years' involvement in community efforts, said that the effort was not uncommon for her neighborhood, but the results were astounding.
"There's such a volunteer spirit in Northside from any time there's any kind of event," she said. Still, she noted that the fundraising effort for Northside's
McKie Pool proceeded with unusual energy - perhaps from the neighborhood's desire to provide an outlet for its children, or perhaps from the collective influence of a city's worth of neighborhoods each working toward a shared goal.
"When standing on the corner of Blue Rock and Hamilton Avenue in beach garb during a cold Friday rush hour asking for spare change, I was amazed at the people that mentioned swimming at Mckie as a kid and even those that didn't seem to have much money threw in some change," she said.
Has the successful CRC/community joint fundraising effort changed how people approach civic efforts? Will City Council members see more efforts in which citizens come to them not just with complaints but also with grassroots-led solutions, needing partial assistance from the city rather than complete support from council's offices? Will neighborhoods begin to take public matters into their own hands, in an era of tight budgets and potentially limited support from centralized city leadership? Only time will tell, but it doesn't take a great stretch of the imagination to see at least some changes growing out of the work that has ensured Cincinnati kids will stay cool this summer.
Photography by Scott Beseler.
Pool chairs in waiting
McKie pool in Northside
Clinton Springs pool
Dyer pool in Westend
Diving board and my new shoes
The Sundresses playing in an Over the Rhine empty pool