The Plaza ducks have received their remodeled pond, but the Sonoma Valley High School is still without a campus pool to splash around in. However, strokes are being made to install a new pool at the High School at the original site, where the pool used to reside before it was removed in 2005, due to safety concerns and the cost to fix the outdated pool system.
At its last regular monthly meeting, on October 14, the board of trustees for the Sonoma Valley Unified School District heard details of the proposal by Assistant Superintendent Justin Frese for a 25-yard-long by 109-foot-wide pool on the high school campus. This meets the standard criteria for California Interscholastic Federation water polo and swimming. It would cost, the trustees were told, in the neighborhood of $2.5 to $3 million, roughly double the $1.5 million that the school district had earlier set aside for the project.
The school district is now looking for a municipal partner to help shoulder the cost.
The architects, TLCD Architecture in Santa Rosa, have estimated the cost to build the pool at $1,345,000. However, many extras, including fencing, overhead lighting, a deck, mechanical equipment, and utility connections bring the estimate up to $2,039,000. After a 10 percent contingency and 20 percent soft costs are added, the total is projected to be $2,651,000.
The high school’s water polo coach, Sean Mullen, believes the pool to be worth the cost. “Having a pool on campus would not only increase student awareness and participation in aquatic sports, it would also be easier to conduct practices and games during optimal times and conditions for the kids,” argued Mullen. He added, “Active youth swimming programs are the lifeblood of water polo programs. If you can’t swim, you can’t play water polo.”
The issue of bringing a pool back to the high school raises questions about how it will be shared between the high school and the community at large. Fortunately, the water polo coach has a detailed vision of how the balance can be struck between the school and the community.
“It’s going to be a combination of things,” states Mullen. “You’re going to have the high school sports teams, primarily swimming and water polo, which will be able to work out in the mornings and in the afternoons; and then during the school hours, kids will take P.E. classes, where they’ll learn how to swim; and then in the late afternoons and evenings, you can have public groups come in Mondays through Fridays and swim in certain lanes while other practices are going on; and on weekends, you can have a lot of time for the public to use the pool.”
“I think it’s critical that a community has a swimming pool,” asserted Joyce Carlson, Sonoma Valley High School mother of two senior girls. “And a community that has the demographics that Sonoma has, in terms of how much use and how much of the citizenry was active and utilized the pool before it got demolished, really signifies how important it is.”
CommonBond Foundation, a public interest, non-profit organization, proposed a new community pool in 2005 that would be built adjacent to the high school parking lot and Adele Harrison Middle School. The project proposal was a $10 million Olympic-sized pool, which would be available to the community as a swim center, complete with a volleyball pavilion, snack bar, and new tennis courts. The school district decided to pass on the project.
President of the foundation, Bill Hammett, said, “CommonBond was pleased to have spearheaded the project to design a new Sonoma Community Swim Center on Broadway, next to the high school. We’re disappointed not to have had the chance to fund-raise for it, as we thought the community would rally around that new resource. But certainly we support the school district’s effort to build its own pool on the high school campus, as that would fulfill a missing element in that school’s athletic program.”
Aside from the estimated $2.65 million cost to build the pool, there are also maintenance costs to keep in mind, which are estimated to cost around $100,000 a year for utilities and an additional $50,000 a year for personnel.
Regarding the annual costs, Hammett mentioned, “As the district looks for partners in the project, they’ll need to figure out how to accommodate public use, and they’ll particularly need to look for partners who can help with the annual cash flow requirements to maintain a new facility, once it’s built.”
Mullen is looking to neighboring Vintage High School, in Napa Valley, as an example of how the annual maintenance costs can be sustained. “When you’re offering swim lessons, which make a lot of money, and you have the swim teams that are paying monthly fees, you’ve already dramatically reduced your monthly operating cost. My colleagues at Vintage put together a whole package for how the school could have made $60,000 over the course of four months. It’s possible to actually be making money, not losing money, if they were to follow through with the protocols. So, it can be done.”
Frese pointed out at the October 14 meeting, “The cost to operate, I think, is the crux, and it’s certainly on my mind. One of the things we’re really trying to pin down is how much cash it’s going to take to do this.” In order to move forward, Frese suggested, “the next step would be to find partners to deal, first and foremost, with the operating cost, and, secondarily, with the hard capital cost. What we need is a long-term solution with a partner. I don’t see us being able to do this alone.”
There are few in the community who would disagree that the high school pool is sorely missed. As Carlson points out, “The high school is a focal point in the community for many different things. There’s a lot of after-school activities that happen at the high school for all of the valley – for children of all ages – and so to me, the high school is the most obvious place to have a pool. I can’t even imagine that it would be put anywhere else.”
Outgoing school board trustee Sandra Lowe put it this way: “The money that we have – some of it is bond money. And that’s money that the public voted to invest in our schools and facilities and so we have an obligation to create facilities with that money. The pool that was taken away from us in the middle of the night is a complete black mark on this district, and a disrespect to the community that that happened. And I think that we’re acting in good faith in trying to repair that issue.”
No action is expected by the school board at the November meeting tonight, and perhaps not at all until a partner is found. Sonoma Mayor Joanne Sanders commented, “The city has not yet been approached by the school district, but we’ll certainly study any proposal, especially one that provides for significant public use. A community pool has long been a priority of mine, and I sure hope to see something built before my second term is up.”
