Reconsider Janss Pool Status

A fancy aquatic center it’s not. Janss Pool sits modestly within its chain-link enclosure at the end of Greenmeadow Avenue in Thousand Oaks, a dinky rectangle of Jell-O green water with a picnic pavilion, brick barbecue and a patch of lawn barely big enough for badminton.

On the long list of civic amenities in this prosperous, family-focused city, Janss Pool ranks near the bottom. Yet it is a civic amenity, one the city should try a little harder to save.

On the advice of legal and financial staff, the city manager put a line in this year’s budget allocating $80,000 to demolish the pool. Looked at strictly from a dollars-and-cents point of view, that would make perfect sense.

The pool sits next to the city-owned Los Robles Golf Course, which is about to be expanded. Already four or five golf balls stray into the pool area each week, and that could get worse after the expansion. At least one cash settlement has been paid to a pool patron who caught an errant golf ball in the face.

Add to that liability concerns about potential drownings at the unsupervised facility, plus the gap between the $15,000 a year it costs to maintain the place and the $5,000 it earned in rental fees, and any lawyer or bean counter will tell you there’s only one thing to do.

Ah, but the moms and kids who flock here on summer afternoons see things differently. A posse of them turned out last week to ask the Thousand Oaks City Council to save the pool and to roll back the huge, sudden hike in the rental rate--from $92 per day clear up to $55 per hour, $75 per hour on the weekends.

Spend a little of that budgeted $80,000 to put a net over the top, they urged. List the pool on the city Web site and make other small attempts to advertise it so it is rented more often and earns more income. But don’t just trash this little piece of Conejo Valley history, a relic of the estate of the pioneer Janss family. Don’t reduce the swimming options just because this happens to be an unusually cool summer.

To their credit, all five council members voted to take another look at the matter before pulling the drain plug. We encourage city staff to investigate the feasibility of the moms’ suggestions and to brainstorm on their own.

With a little creative thinking, this peaceful corner of the city can continue to offer a cool escape on hot Conejo Valley afternoons.