After a tidal wave of bad news about Baltimore city public pools – three of them were closed for the season due to mechanical problems during the hottest summer on record  – Rec & Parks officials came to the City Council hearing about it braced for criticism.

Displaying a graphic showing the ages of city pools, many built in the 70s and some in the 50s, Recreation and Parks Director Reginald Moore yesterday called for patience.

“Because we’re operating off of these old systems, there’s going to be down time,” he said. “And the expense it takes us every year to get these pools up and running? It is no small feat, no cheap task!”

But Patterson Park residents, together with the director of a nonprofit that brings city public school students to the pool, demanded answers about the closure and why Rec & Parks did such a poor job informing the public about it.

“I’d like to call for some accountability about the reasons for the pool closure,” said Brian Baker, director of staff development at Fitness, Fun & Games.

Baker said he heard there were problems, but was told by park officials that the pool would be opened in “mid-June.” His group brought children there on June 26, only to be turned away.

When he asked for a date when the pool would be open, the parks official he contacted told him, “I couldn’t give you an answer,” said Baker, who spent weeks scrambling to find alternative facilities and activities for the children.

The pool never opened and the students “were deprived of  the chance to exercise outdoors while still avoiding the heat of the summer . . . and to learn to swim, which could potentially save their life,” he said.

“We don’t pay on time”

Councilman Zeke Cohen, meanwhile, confronted Moore about procurement problems that, he said, significantly delayed long-planned repairs at the pool.

“I’ve heard directly from contractors that they don’t want to pursue work with the city because we don’t always pay on time, we aren’t able to work out issues when they invariably arise and because work will be delayed significantly,” Cohen said, speaking before the Public Safety and Government Operations Committee.

He noted that nearly $2 million in state funds for pool repair became available in July 2021, or  two years ago, and that additional funding was obtained in 2023. [See timeline below.]

“Yet when the work went out to bid for the first time, no contractors wanted to work on the pool. That substantially delayed the renovation work,” he said. “We had to bid this project twice because the first advertisement yielded no bids.”

“While we did have the money, we was just not sitting on the money. We had to go through the process”  – Rec & Parks Director Reginald Moore.

Given the availability of funding, he said Rec & Parks should have been able to fix mechanical problems and get the pool ready for this season. He asked Moore why he thought no contractor wanted to bid on the project.

“I don’t have a magical ball that can tell me why people didn’t bid,” Moore replied, noting that the “size of the contract” as well as “the age of our system” could have been factors.

“It does seem like procurement is a real challenge,” Cohen observed, questioning a representative for Mayor Brandon Scott about whether the city has ever considered having contracting handled centrally by the Department of Finance rather than by individual agencies.

Nina Themelis, interim director if the Mayor’s Office of Government Relations, said she didn’t have a specific answer, but that officials have been “doing a deep dive” on procurement generally.

Moore said there was no contract administration office at Rec & Parks until after he came to head the agency in 2017. He noted that the first budget after he came the agency “received zero capital dollars for pool upgrades or renovation.”

He also offered other reasons for the delay in getting the pools fixed: the need to get design work completed and obtain stormwater and health department permits.

“While we did have the money, we was just not sitting on the money. We had to go through the process.”

An email that Cohen displayed, however, suggested that the agency’s failure to attract bidders was the major cause of the delay:

“It’s messy”

There were some splashes of good news at the afternoon hearing, but even these came with caveats.

Moore declared that two full-time positions have been created for pool maintenance and that the projects to repair the pools at Cherry Hill and Patterson Park are well underway. (The Clifton Park Pool, initially closed amid maintenance problems, was reopened late last month.)

He assured Cohen that the pump system to be installed at Patterson Park Pool was going to be the same kind as the one at the Druid Park Pool, which was reopened in 2022 after renovations. (Cohen had heard Patterson Park was going to get lower-grade equipment, and Moore acknowledged that had originally been the plan.)

“Not everyone has the money to go to the beach, to have a car or get a taxi to go to swim”  – Lucia Islas.

When the time came to say exactly when those projects would be finished, Moore waffled.

“It’s messy,” he said. “It’s projected to be summer 2024.”

“Are we looking at June or August?” Councilwoman Phylicia Porter pressed.

Moore demurred, saying, “I don’t want to lock in a day or time.”

Likewise on the subject of improving Rec & Parks’ performance when it comes to informing the public about impending pool closures.

Several witnesses talked about people walking up to the pool with towels accompanied by children in bathing suits, only to find the gates locked. Cohen said his office did not find out that the pool might not open this summer until April.

Asked when the Patterson Park and Cherry Hill pools will be open next summer – in June, in August, Director Moore replied, “I don’t want to lock in a day or time.”

“We acknowledge that, yes, there are some improvements we can make from a communications standpoint,” Moore said.

He said he would “look into” Cohen’s idea about getting a text alert system for pool users in English and Spanish, then cautioned that “the reality is that the system is also going to have limitations” because there are different groups to be notified.

“It’s not like the Y,” he said.

He pointed out that the agency uses social media to disseminate information, to which Cohen countered that not everyone uses social media and that “even the website wasn’t updated regularly.”

“Our people need it”

Users spoke passionately about how they value the Patterson Park Pool, including Lucía Islas, a single mother of four who said two of her children used to work there.

“The pool was the time they could have fun, they can have the chance to interact with a lot of people that were not Latino,” she said, urging the city to bring the pool back online.

“Not everyone has the money to go to the beach, to have a car or get a taxi to go to swim.”

As a substitute in the waning days of summer, a Pop-up Splash Pad was unveiled yesterday near the closed Patterson Park Pool.

The pop-up pad was organized by Cohen and state Delegate Robbyn Lewis, working with a group of nonprofits, neighborhood associations and businesses, including Friends of Patterson Park and Comité Latino of Baltimore.

Cohen said the splash pad will be free and open to the public on Sundays from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.

It will open on Labor Day from 1-4 p.m. After it closes for the season, the water features will be donated to Rec & Parks for future use citywide.

“Even though the summer is going to finish soon, please let us have that,” said Islas, president Comité Latino. “Our people need it.”

Others speaking at the committee hearing looked to the future and spoke up for other parts of the city that don’t even have a public pool to repair.

“I’ve lived in East Baltimore my entire life and had no access to a pool,” said the 13th District’s Councilman Antonio Glover.

Director Moore said he couldn’t promise anything specific, but assured Glover that “we are working on a comprehensive plan, looking at gaps.”

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TIMELINE for PATTERSON PARK POOL ISSUES, released by Baltimore City Recreation & Parks Department 8/23/23