Central Pennsylvania public pools struggle to stay afloat through maintenance and inflation

• By Sydney Roach/WPSU

Summer is usually a time for families to have fun in the sun and visit their public pool. But more people in central Pennsylvania have to go out of their way to find a new place to swim, or find something else to do, because of pool closures. WPSU’s Sydney Roach talked with Todd Roth, who has served Centre Region Parks and Recreation as aquatics supervisor since 2002, to find out why.

Sydney Roach

Todd Roth, thanks for talking with us. We’re seeing some pools in central Pennsylvania having a hard time staying open. Prospect Pool in Altoona just reopened after being closed 2 years, the Lock Haven YMCA pool just reopened after 3 years, and Kepler Pool in Bellefonte is still closed for its 4th year. Maintenance problems seem to be a recurring theme that I’m seeing with a lot of these. Can you tell me why they’re all having this problem around the same time?

Todd Roth

Most of these pools in the area were built in the 50s, 60s, and 70s and so they’re reaching the end of their lifespan. And we’re seeing a lot of pools that are as construction and maintenance expenses continue to grow, a lot of communities are just not willing to put the dollars in in order to keep them maintained. Many pools need a complete renovation. The problems that they’ve got going on are so overwhelming that it makes more sense to demolish or partially demolish and rebuild from scratch. But again, construction prices are so high in the community right now it becomes more and more expensive to be able to do that.

Sydney Roach

Do you think pools are less popular than they used to be? Just last week, I was talking to my parents who grew up in the 70s and 80s. They say they spent pretty much all of their time at a pool. That’s where they met all of their friends. And that’s where they hung out with their family. Do you notice fewer people using public pools over the years?

Todd Roth

It really depends on the weather. On a hot sunny day, everybody wants to be at the pool. There are a lot of other options for families that want to have fun, and there’s a lot of activities that are available in most communities. But swimming pools remain to be a popular and viable option, as long as the weather is sunny and nice. I will say there seems to be a trend towards more planned and family activity, and swimming pools can be a part of that. But they need to have aquatic amenities in order to attract people. Back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s that rectangular swimming hole was a good viable option for many to communities. But families now demand more aquatic entertainment. They want waterslides they want climbing walls, they want lazy rivers, current channels. And they’re seeing a lot of that in water parks indoor and outdoor water parks across the country. And that seems to be the expected trend for aquatic entertainment. And if your facility doesn’t have those things, it’s going to be much more difficult to draw people in as aquatic users.

Sydney Roach

Do you think these big pools or these big water parks have a negative impact on smaller pools like this?

Todd Roth

It can, yeah. People are willing to travel. They’re willing to drive to get better value for their entertainment dollar. And if it takes an extra 20 or 30 minutes to drive somewhere to get a better experience a lot of people are going to be willing to do that. That’s not to say that neighborhood pools and community pools don’t have their place. But you’re right there does need to be some real evaluation of what they’re offering compared to other places.

Sydney Roach

While we’re talking about long term trends… With the COVID-19 pandemic, of course, there were about two years that many people weren’t going to public pools. Do you think people have come back to the same level as before the pandemic?

Todd Roth

From what we’ve seen, they have. In terms of the number of users, yes, people have come back. The challenge we’re finding is that there’s been a real impact, number one, on the swimming ability of our patrons, because for two years, we didn’t run swim lessons. And you know, for us for our programs, you know, that was almost 1,500 kids that did not, you know, program registrations that did not happen. And so all those kids didn’t learn how to swim during those two years. And now we can’t keep up with the demand because we’ve got all of those kids wanting to learn how to swim, as well as all of the other kids that are continuing to come up through that pipeline. In addition, the other impact of COVID is in available lifeguards. The workforce was reduced across the country for all industries. And so now lifeguards have to compete with all of the other industries that are already short. And again, we missed two years of training for new lifeguards. And so we’re seeing that deficit that’s starting to come up come up through an impact – kids that don’t know how to swim or kids that didn’t get the opportunity to train as lifeguards during the COVID years.

Sydney Roach

You mentioned lifeguards. How are you staying competitive with other jobs to bring in lifeguards?

Todd Roth

There’s two main things that we’ve found in order to be competitive. Number one is you have to pay a competitive salary. All of the other industries in the centre region that are paying and looking for that 15-to-21 year old employee are offering a very competitive wage. We have to at least get in the ballpark in order to remain viable. The other thing we need to do is create an environment in which people want to come to work. You know, if you’re paying them a decent wage, then you’ve got them to prioritize coming to work over going to either work somewhere else, or go do all of the things that teenage kids want to do during their day.

Sydney Roach

Inflation [is] also impacting how you bring in people. But are you dealing with higher costs for food for concession stands [and] maintenance?

Todd Roth

All of our costs have gone up. I mean, yes, the food for our concessions. But, you know, also just things like chemical prices. The cost of chlorine has almost doubled in the last three years. We’ve got to find a way to manage those expenses, the cost of utilities rises, the cost of staffing. Again, if you’re going to offer a competitive wage across the volume of kids, you need to have to safely be open to the public, that’s going to have a significant financial impact on your bottom line.

Sydney Roach

How are you keeping pools affordable for families with all that in mind?

Todd Roth

Well, we do have to raise some of our admission and season pass prices. So the users are paying a big chunk of that fee. The cost for swim lessons has risen a little bit. We do have a youth scholarship program for families that are in need. They can apply and get reduced price programs, swim lessons, and also reduced price pool passes. But even that only lasts as long as we have funding to provide it. When we run out of funding for that, unfortunately, we’re not able to offer it as much as we’d like.

Sydney Roach

What do you think the future is for public pools in Pennsylvania? What are they going to look like in 5-to-10 years?

Todd Roth

Well, again, you need to offer amenities that that your people want. If you want to draw families in for aquatic recreation, you need to offer features and amenities. Most pools that are renovating are heading in that direction. They’re offering waterslide spray features climbing walls, inflatable obstacle courses and things like that because that is the trend in aquatic recreation. The other big piece of this is that communities need to value aquatics as a part of the value of their neighborhoods. They need to see aquatics as vital to the growth of community communities. It needs to compete with things like education and good police force ,and a great library, and things like that. Everything you look for, if you want to move into a community that’s just part of one piece of the puzzle, but it needs to be valued by the people that are that run your community as something that that families look forward to and they’re moving in.

Sydney Roach

Todd Roth, thanks for talking with us.

Todd Roth

Happy to.