Simi Valley Trying to Plug Financial Drain on Pool

Simi Valley schools and parks officials vowed Tuesday to try to keep the Rancho Simi Community Park Swimming Pool open, despite earlier predictions that it would close in September because of decreasing financial support from the state.

About 200 swimmers, divers and other supporters of the popular 50-meter pool packed Simi Valley City Hall, cheering and applauding, to let city officials know they want the pool kept open.

Bonnie Carpenter, chairwoman of the Rancho Simi Recreation and Parks District, said that members of her board and the schools board will meet within the month to figure out how to make up the estimated $68,000 state funding shortfall.

“I think that we can resolve this issue,” Carpenter told the group. “Certainly no one in this parks district wants to close down that pool.”

Robert Purvis, superintendent of the Simi Valley Unified School District, said, “We need to consider a fair way of sharing the cost of operating the pool. It would cost as much or more to close the pool as it would to keep it open.”

The parks district announced two weeks ago that it could no longer help pay the approximate $108,000 annual cost of maintaining its pool, which was opened in 1978.

Faced with $1.138 million in state funding cuts, the district has told the Simi Valley Unified School district that unless it can pay more than the $40,000 pool rent it now pays yearly, the pool will be closed in September for the 1993-94 school year.

Closing the pool would severely hurt the swimming, diving and water polo programs at Royal and Simi Valley highs, officials said. It also would displace the 90 members of Conejo Simi Aquatics, one of the top age-group programs in Southern California, as well as thousands of recreational swimmers.

Regardless of what happens, the pool will remain open every summer, officials said. There were 17,000 paid admissions to the Rancho Simi pool last summer, and during the first four months of this year, the Conejo Simi Aquatics swimmers alone accounted for more than 5,500 pool visits.

The park district must raise an additional $50,000 to keep the pool open year-round, which would be added to the school district’s $40,000 contribution and the $15,000 to $20,000 generated by renting the pool to swim teams, said Al Church, assistant general manager of the park district.