Posted on: Friday, June 24, 2005

EDITORIAL
City must maintain access to public pools

The City Council, faced with the painful job of trimming spending, has been mulling over the rising expenses of operating O'ahu's municipal swimming pools, and members even have floated the idea of charging swimmers user fees. So far they have not given serious consideration to the notion — and they shouldn't.

When the Central O'ahu aquatic complex opens, the annual cost of running the pools islandwide will hit $4.4 million. That's a startling figure, and perhaps the council can scour the budget for ways to whittle that a bit. But elected officials should work hard to avoid cutbacks in overall swimming hours, which already had been reduced in recent years.

Public-private partnerships are a good strategy, and Wai'anae residents should press the mayor to find a way to finance the proposed YMCA-community pool in a way that passes legal muster. But even without such help, the city must consider broad access to a network of swimming pools part of basic services, not a dispensable frill.

Instead, the wisest policy would be to drum up participation in learn-to-swim programs. Drowning is a leading cause of accidental death among Hawai'i's youth, partly because their swimming skills are spotty at best. Experts estimate that as many as one-third of Hawai'i residents can't swim competently. That statistic should not be blithely accepted; it should scare us into promoting the considerable learn-to-swim programs that already exist.

And it would be wrong to force the users of municipal pools, many of whom already are wrestling with the high cost of living here, to shell out a fee for the privilege. The city should do nothing that would further discourage people from improving their swimming ability. There have been too many lives lost to drowning here, a sad irony for a state that is surrounded by water.