Volunteers’ Efforts Help Reopen Swimming Pool : Camarillo: City’s only outdoor facility was closed last summer because of park district budget cuts.

Turning on the tap to fill the Freedom Pool in Camarillo may be the easiest part of a year-long effort to reopen the outdoor pool, which was closed last summer because of park district budget cuts.

As many as 75 parents and volunteers worked evenings and weekends for six weeks just to spruce up the place. They scraped and painted the interior of the 200,000-gallon pool, hung new doors and cleaned and painted the restrooms.

Even before the actual labor began, there were candy bars to sell and donations to be coaxed from community members, not to mention persuading the Pleasant Valley Recreation and Park District that the money could be raised.

But today the tap goes on, and by June 20, the 25-meter Freedom Pool on the former Air Force Base at Camarillo Airport will be open to the public in afternoon and early evenings.

Parents of the Pleasant Valley Swim Team contributed about $11,000 in cash donations and about $5,000 more in supplies and labor to get Camarillo’s only outdoor pool reopened.

Bob Stallings, the district’s recreation supervisor, said the district will contribute between $16,000 and $20,000 from its operating budget to open the pool.

“That’ll take us through the end of the summer,” Stallings said. “After that, we’ll have to see if the swim team wants to keep it open. We’ve all put in so much effort to getting it to the point that we haven’t really looked ahead.”

Ron Marcus, who has a 14-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son on the swim team, said parents already have plans to raise funds to keep the pool open next year.

“We’ve got one lady who is a professional grant writer who has offered her services, and during the off-season we plan on approaching some of the other user groups,” Marcus said.

Eventually, he said, the parent-run swim team hopes to operate the pool permanently.

“The pool is important to the community overall because it is the only outdoor pool in the area, but we’ve also had about 300% growth in the size of our swim team in the last three years,” Marcus said.

The team has gone from about 40 members in 1991 to 146 this year, with participants ranging in age from 6 to 18. Marcus said parents hope to expand the team so that it can eventually compete nationally.

Last summer, community members were dismayed when the park district announced they did not have the funds to open the pool. Camarillo has only one other pool, Pleasant Valley Pool, an indoor facility which Stallings said has been overcrowded as a result.

“We’re pretty much booked from first thing in the morning until 10 at night,” he said. With the Freedom Pool’s opening, he said the district will be able to offer more classes at the indoor pool, thus generating revenue.

For information about the cost of swimming lessons and operating hours at both pools, call the park district at 482-1996.