Glassell Pool Update: City Council Votes to Save Pool From Aug. 12 Closure

The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to provide the necessary funds to keep the community pool at the Glassell Park Recreation Center open beyond the pool’s August 12 scheduled closure because of budget cuts.

Coming minutes after a lengthy discussion in which the Council pledged to give car dealerships in the City tax breaks so that they don’t set up shop on neighboring cities, the 12-0 vote reflected the wide support in City Hall for CD 13 Council member Eric Garcetti’s plea Tuesday to keeping the Glassell pool going, albeit with an in-built caveat: Although he would like to keep the pool open throughout the year, in the event that the City cannot find the necessary funds, the Glassell pool would remain open at least until Labor Day.

This is a “very used pool—it is critical to the community,” Garcetti told the Council before the vote, also mentioning in the same breath that the Department of Recreation and Parks has told him it would cost “several hundreds of thousand of dollars” to keep the pool open year-round.

Garcetti said in his presentation to the Council that he was asking the city for $10,000 to keep the pool open through the summer months. He said he would explore options to ensure the pool continues to exist with his counterparts in CD 1 (Council Member Ed Reyes) and CD 14 (Council Member Josè Huizar), adding: “We’re also exploring the possibility of extending the closure date to the fall in case yearlong funding falls short.”

Answering several funding-related questions from Garcetti, Rec and Parks Executive Officer Regina Adams told the Council that it would take more like $16,000 to keep the pool open through summer, and that one of the reasons the Glassell Park pool is scheduled to be shut down is that it has relatively low attendance—an annual average of 106 people per day—compared to many other City pools.

Two other public pools—Hubert H. Humphrey Pool in Pacoima and Peck Park Pool in San Pedro—have also been selected for closure, and those pools had an even lower attendance than the Glassell pool, Adams said, adding that the Glassell Rec Center lost four full-time positions as well as part-time staffing related to the pool.

The Glassell Park pool is a seasonal, not a year-round pool, Adams told the Council, underscoring a point that might not be evident to a lot of people. The only reason that the pool has been running year-round over the past years is because it has been kept open to “compensate” for the maintenance-related closure of the Echo Park Deep Pool, Adams said. That pool, not the one in Glassell Park, was built to be a year-round pool, she added.

Previously:

• City Council to Hear Motion to Keep Glassell Park Swimming Pool Open.

• Glassell Park Rec Center Pool to be Closed Starting August 12.