County Drops Fees for Swimming Pools

Just in time for summer, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday agreed to eliminate fees charged for using the county’s 30 public pools.

The fees of $2 for adults and $1 for children were a last-ditch grab for revenue implemented in 1994, as the county tottered on the brink of bankruptcy. Five years later, the county is in the black and hiring 5,000 new workers.

“We can afford it, and it’s the right thing to do,” said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who proposed the rollback. “We have turned this county around financially and we are in the black. The least we can do is allow kids who rely on public pools for their summertime recreation their share.”

Eliminating the fee is one way that local taxpayers benefit from the economic boom, which has swelled the coffers of local governments and kicked them into a modest expansion mode. Mayor Richard Riordan too has proposed eliminating the 75-cent fee at city pools this summer using part of City Hall’s surplus.

After initially warning that it may take weeks to eliminate the fees, parks officials late Tuesday said they expect to have the pools free by Saturday, the date most open.

County Parks and Recreation Director Rodney Cooper told supervisors that his agency would have to prepare for an expected onslaught of new swimmers. About 250,000 use the county’s pools each year, but twice that many used them before fees were implemented in 1994.

Cooper said the county will have to hire additional lifeguards and locker room attendants, especially because without the fees the pools again may become magnets for homeless people.

The county also will have to figure out what to do with 60 cashiers that it has already hired for the summer. A county parks spokeswoman said they would be assigned to other positions.

Supervisors on Tuesday approved giving the parks department an extra $500,000 to cover the loss of revenues from the fees and fund the new positions.

Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who runs a foundation that pays for children to use pools in her district, praised the fee elimination, saying it will give children something to do over the long summer.