Cudahy Council Shelves Plan for Swimming Pool, Tries for Gym Instead : Recreation: The officials fear that the funds for the delayed pool project are in jeopardy.

The City Council has abandoned plans for a swimming pool on a junior high school site and is asking the state Legislature for permission to use the pool funds to build a gymnasium and expand the community center at Clara Street Park.

The council voted 4 to 1 last week to do away with 3-year-old plans to build an outdoor pool because the city is in danger of losing $300,000 in state funds earmarked for the project.

In order to keep the pool funds, the city must begin construction by June, 1991. The pool was to be built on property acquired by the Los Angeles Unified School District.

But city leaders said that because the property has not been acquired, construction of the pool has been delayed and the grant threatened.

“If we wait for the school to buy that property, it will be too late. We’re not going to have any money to do anything,” Mayor Joseph Graffio said.

City leaders hope to keep the $300,000 by asking the Legislature to transfer it to another recreation project: the expansion of the Leo P. Turner Community Center and the construction of a connecting gymnasium.

City Manager Jack Joseph said state Sen. Bill Greene (D-Los Angeles) has said he would seek the legislative approval to transfer the funds. Greene sponsored the bill for the pool funds.

With the state’s current fiscal crisis, Joseph warned that there is a chance the Legislature will seize the money for use by the state. “But the point is if we don’t do anything we will lose that money anyway, so why not try,” he said.

The swimming pool complex was, at one time, Cudahy’s priority project. In 1987, city officials even held a groundbreaking ceremony to herald the pool’s construction.

Political, logistical and financial problems plagued the project, and after that first symbolic shovelful of soil was overturned, nothing more was done.

Opposing the effort to abandon the pool plans was Councilman John Robertson, who accused his fellow council members of favoring senior citizens over younger residents.

According to 1989 estimates from the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, 41% of the residents in Bell, Maywood and Cudahy are 19 years old and under. The community center is primarily used by the Cudahy Senior Citizen Club for its daily lunches and Friday meetings. Mayor Graffio, Mayor Pro Tem Joseph Fregeau and council members Alex Rodriguez and Jack Cluck are all members and officers of the club.

“When you are a councilman, you serve all the community, not just the senior citizens,” Robertson said.

Fregeau said Robertson’s complaint had no validity.

“The gym is not for seniors. The gym is for young people,” Fregeau said. “You think the seniors are going to go play basketball over there?”

Fregeau also said that the gymnasium could be used by youths to play basketball, volleyball and other games year-round, while the pool would have to be closed several months during the year.

Graffio and other council members said that the cost of maintaining the pool was a factor in their decision.

According to a report prepared by city staff, maintenance and operation costs for the pool would be more than $89,000 a year, while the costs for the sports facility would be about $55,000.

The city has $863,000 in county and federal grant money, in addition to the state grants totaling $300,000, but the estimated construction cost of the pool is $925,000, and the sports complex is budgeted at $1.1 million.

Robertson said the city could avoid losing the funds by building the pool at Lugo Park, as originally planned.

But Joseph said the reason the pool project was switched from Lugo Park is that the park is too small. If built, Joseph said, the pool would take up the entire site, thus leaving Cudahy residents with only two parks.