Our Pool is a "Bastard!"

High school and college competitive swimming is 25 yards. To envision this, think of lanes going across on the width on the above photo, not the length as shown. For international swim competitions, they swim 50 meters which is the length of our new pool.

Tonight the commission will be voting to approve a contract with Lincoln Equipment for a pool cover. Pugh Pools, the guys who originally screwed it up, was one of the bidders. Our contract with Greater Bay (the company that is suing us) provided for a removable pool cover with two reels; they gave us some "bubble wrap."

Joe Kroll, Public Services Director, says that having a pool cover will enhance the marketing opportunities to pursue agreements with local and out of state college swim teams. Yes, a pool cover will certainly help retain the heat, however, Joe Kroll and Cory O'Gorman were told the truth about this entire design on several occasions while the pool was being redesigned but no one listened. They were told where to go for information. No one bothered because if they had, they would have known that we were heading for a non-standard pool and that we were getting a pool cover that would not do the job and all of this would limit the City from ever attracting competitive meets.

According to an authority on pools, our new pool is a “bastard” pool. For it to be a competitive pool, the swim lanes must be marked side by side. Our lanes are separated by a diving section. No one checked on this design and according to my source, they were told. Cory O’Gorman, the project manager, never was there when the City signed off on the pool. To this day it was done incorrectly; some pumps have to be replaced, they never got automatic timers and the two battery operated time clocks do NOT work. These are the wrong mechanisms for a competitive swim pool. We paid for work that was either not up to our expectations or never done.

At the time, they should have known what would have attracted a national swimming meet because that was the intention--national swim meets that would bring in revenue. If they didn’t, then they should have found out. Afterall, it did end up costing $450,000. That is why we hired a project manager to oversee our interests. According to my source, instead of 8 lanes that are not contiguous, they should have installed 10, side-by-side lanes each with automatic timers.

I listened to a talk show last night and the host said, "once we make decisions, let them go--let's see how they work out." He was talking about the Gateways and that some of us out here have totally missed the mark--implying that we have no vision for the future because now with our spending $15 million on two roads, (money bonded out with no taxpayer vote, something the CRA can do) we will be ready for the recovery. In other words, he was saying that we are all just plain "visionless" or living in the past.

These road projects were decided when the economy was thriving and had nothing to do with a recovery. How do you ever justify this sort of debt with no guarantees? Is that sort of like gambling with tax dollars, something that governments do well. Let's push it through, we can't pay for it but we just have to have it. Gambling on the "Field of Dreams?" Now that heights are limited to 35 feet, we are forced to see how "it works out."

I have never prescribed to that cliche, "the decision has been made, let's move on." It's another one we hear all the time in Lake Worth..."let's move forward." Bad decisions are made all of the time and they have cost this city millions of dollars. We pay Staff and a City Manager to make the right decisions and we elect officials to do the same. How many officials in PB County went to prison? To say, "Oh, well, let's see how it works out" is no solution. Do we tell a criminal that? Sweeping things under the rug is something Lake Worth does. These costly mistakes should be pointed out over and over again so that hopefully they will never be repeated. A bad decision was to hire Greater Bay and we are still paying for that mistake. The good news is, our pool design can be rectified but it will cost us.

So tonight, we are voting to spend another $27,000 on something that should have been done correctly in the first place. This is just another example of out-sourcing and its short-comings. It is another example of staff not checking the facts. It is an example of a project manager not looking after our interests. Staff recommended and allowed us to get involved with Greater Bay, a company with NO experience in beachfront restorations and certainly a company with no pool experience--a company that didn't even have to provide plans and specifications for the pool renovation--a company that hired a sub-contractor that owed the city thousands of dollars in code violations. Will we ever learn?