The irony and the political posturing couldn’t be more obvious;
Sioux Falls public pools will begin to close at the end of this week. Come to the news conference to learn how pool closing dates are determined, how staffing levels are affected by college start dates and fall high school activity start dates, and which pools will close first across Sioux Falls.
So now the sour grapes of the late school start date are starting to affect city politics. Wild Water West must be giddy. I can’t tell you how stupid this is. We complain that the (snowfox team) can’t swim in the winter, yet we close the city pools weeks before the first leaf falls from the trees. This obvious political ploy is disgusting.
I called it back before the vote. The pools were never going to stay open later in the summer, and the reasoning sounds logical. But they had all summer to come up with a workable solution; other cities somehow manage to keep pools open until the end of August.
I don’t think that there is any political posturing involved with the closing of the pools. The majority of the lifeguards are college students and they are heading back to school. South Dakota schools start the week of the 24th so that will affect a lot of them. Next year will be interesting with school getting out later which will mean that the college age guards will be missing several weeks of work. it could be a lot harder to staff the pools next year. BTW, my daughter has done this for 2 years and it is next to impossible to find high school kids to do this job. They don’t want to work the hours and mess up their summers.
School getting out later? Pools do not open until Memorial Day weekend and school gets out three days later?
Hammerhead – interesting points about the difficulty in securing people to fill merely seasonal lifeguard positions. Gee. I wonder how City Hall will manage to staff the “sorely needed” new indoor aquatic center year ’round?
“But they had all summer to come up with a workable solution”
LMAO! Yeah, I always chuckle at all the rec directors making around $70K a year working for parks and rec department. I often wonder what they do all day. The pool director looks like she just lays by the pool all day, one of the other directors seems more concerned about her hair, makeup and shoes then actually putting workable solutions together. If they paid a decent part-time wage they could actual adults as life-guards (what about school teachers looking for summer employement?) Blasphemo, I thought the same thing, if they can’t even staff our outdoor pools for at least 3 more weeks how do they plan to staff the indoor pool 360 days a year?
Many years ago I worked for the SD GFP in a state park. Their solution to college workers leaving: they gave us a bonus of $0.75 an hour, for every hour that you worked during the summer, if you came back from school and worked Labor Day weekend. That kept a lot of us coming back and it also kept us at work an extra week instead of leaving early (to lounge around and party) before classes actually started. I am certain the city could retain lifeguards with a similar solution.
I’m guessing many of the employees for the indoor aquatic center will be FT with benefits.
And when you work for the City, we all know that could make it one of the better jobs in town.
Maybe the City could work out a deal with one of the colleges in town to add this position as an intern position to an EMT or paramedic class. Or have it be part of the student work programs. A little bit of communication can go a long way if you allow it.