Published 12:00 am Wednesday, December 2, 2009

By Mark Wineka
Salisbury Post
Some Salisbury citizens have asked Parks and Recreation officials to rethink their long-range plans to fill in Lincoln Park Pool and convert it to a splash and spray pad.
They want the only city-operated swimming pool to be repaired, improved and even enlarged to include a pad rather than have it closed and wait maybe years for a swimming pool/gymnasium expansion of the Salisbury Civic Center.
“If you look at this side of town,” William Peoples said during a community meeting Tuesday night at First Calvary Baptist Church, “that pool has been a lifesaver.”
Peoples criticized city leaders for spending taxpayer money elsewhere when a priority should have been to fix the leaking Lincoln Park Pool, located on South Long Street near First Calvary.
Peoples said it almost seemed as though they had conspired to ignore the pool’s maintenance and operation so it would eventually be closed.
A member of the city’s gang task force, Peoples said the city has only one gymnasium and one pool for 30,000 people, yet it can spend money on bricks for East Fisher Street, purchase land in the 300 block of South Main Street, renovate the Salisbury Sports Complex and develop a 300-acre park on Hurley School Road that’s too far away for low-income people to use.
About 25 people attended Tuesday’s meeting, called by the Rev. Leamon Brown, pastor of the church. Fliers announcing the meeting were distributed at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast Monday.
Brown said he wanted to have an information-gathering meeting after Peoples mentioned at church Sunday the possibility of the pool’s transformation to a splash/spray pad.
Parks and Recreation Director Gail Elder-White and Program Manager Kenny Roberts attended Tuesday. They stressed that, for this summer at least ,the department would keep Lincoln Park Pool open.
As of now, no money exists in the city’s budget for a splash/spray pad or major repairs to the existing swimming pool.
Elder-White said Lincoln Park Pool is 40-plus years old and on “its last legs.”
“We’ve Band-Aided it for a long time, and it’s getting worse,” Elder-White said, adding if a swimming pool were to continue much longer on the site, the city would probably have to dig up the old pool and start over.
In the summer, the pool loses 1,400 gallons of water every 24 hours. A couple hundred of those gallons are normal evaporation and splash out, Roberts said. Otherwise, there’s a significant leak, Elder-White said, and it’s difficult to say what the cost of repairing it would be until the leak can be located.
“Right now, our best guess is it’s under the pool,” she said.
Staffing for the pool has been another concern. The pool started last summer with two certified lifeguards but lost one of them within a month. “From a safety standpoint, we were all concerned,” Roberts said.
With one lifeguard, the pool had to limit the number of people in the pool to 25. Others had to wait outside for someone to leave. Having one lifeguard also limited the hours of operation.
Elder-White said the proposed $150,000 splash/spray pad ó similar to the one outside the Hurley Family YMCA ó could be open longer and would not need a certified lifeguard. The rest rooms, water supply, fencing and a building for filtration already are on the site, and the transformation would require pulling up the concrete deck, filling in the pool and setting up new piping.
Overall, it would be less expensive, more useable and have a faster turnaround, Elder-White said. It also would be accessible to the disabled, which the current pool is not.
Elder-White said a splash/spray pad would provide an option until the city built a zero-depth pool at the Civic Center, as part of its long-range plan for expansion. A zero-depth pool means that a person could walk into the water, which would gradually become deeper.
Roberts said finding certified lifeguards is a problem for the YMCA and community pools throughout the county. The city offers to pay a potential lifeguard the $125-$130 cost for becoming certified through the American Red Cross, he said.
Sherry Hawthorne, president of the annual Juneteenth committee, said her kids went to Lincoln Park Pool and she hopes her grandchildren can, too.
Hawthorne and others stressed that the parks department must do a better job of communicating through churches, the NAACP and groups such as the West End Community Organization and those representing the East End and former Dixonville.
They could help the Parks and Recreation Department identify young men and women who could become certified as lifeguards, the meeting’s participants said.
Dee Dee Wright said someone has been “sleeping at the wheel” for the pool to be in such disrepair, and she called on Elder-White to be more vigilant for the African-American community in the East End.
Wright said she would like to see the pool stay open and urged Elder-White to make it a budget emphasis for the city. Peoples said the community should get on City Council’s agenda, and Elder-White said one of the best times would be during a public hearing on the budget.
Shirley Johnson said the city is in “a very good place” in trying to help youth, and maybe now is a good time to look for revenue sources beyond city government to help with the pool.
“Somebody out there might think this is a good idea,” she said.
Peoples asked why the city couldn’t open up the former GX Fitness Center, now empty, and make it a teen center in the 300 block of South Main Street. The city owns the building, which includes a pool and sauna.
Contact Mark Wineka at 704-797-4263, or mwineka@salisburypost.com.