Loss of swimming pools points to incompetence

The Youngstown Park Department, led by long-time city employee Joseph R. McRae, had all of last fall, last winter and this spring to make sure that residents, especially the children, had some place to go to beat the heat when the mercury climbed to the 80s and 90s. With only two swimming pools remaining from the six the city once operated, it was reasonable for taxpayers to expect that they would be in working condition all summer long.
But an awful thing happened on the way through last week's brutally hot weather. No pools were open. The North Side pool is gone. A highly touted water park that is supposed to replace it is nothing more than an architect's rendering on a sign in front of the pool house at Belmont Avenue and Tod Lane.
As for Borts Pool on the West Side, it closed July 15 after opening on June 16. McRae and his staff and members of the Youngstown Park and Recreation Commission guessed wrong about the condition of the filtration tanks that pump chlorine into the water. One of the tanks had been broken for some time, but McRae et al. were of the opinion that the other two, although showing wear and tear because of age, would last through this season.
"That calculation was incorrect," said Mayor Jay Williams, who only found out about the problems at Borts last Monday.
Incompetence
Williams, who took office in January, is right about the miscalculation. But the closing of Borts for repairs -- it will be reopened in about two weeks after two new filtration tanks are installed -- and the loss of the North Side facility point to incompetence that the mayor cannot ignore.
Park department officials couldn't have been so overworked in the off-season that they didn't have time to prepare for the summer. And they knew about the tenuous condition of the filtration tanks.
As McRae conceded to a Vindicator reporter, "The tanks are old, and as they get older, they can't deal with the stress." Why, then, roll the dice?
Had the city's park and recreation director gone to the mayor and city council months ago and warned them that without the new tanks Borts' future would be iffy, at best, council would have had to provide the money -- as it did last week,
But while they were appropriating the money for new tanks, most lawmakers weren't willing to point the finger of blame for this disaster. That's the problem with government: It's never anyone's fault.
Councilman Rufus Hudson, D-2nd, was the only one who was willing to tell it like it is. Hudson said poor planning led to no city pools being open.
"There was time to make the necessary repairs to Borts before it opened, and we talked for years about the North Pool and did nothing," Hudson said. "We shouldn't be in a situation where this is the hottest week of the year so far and we have no pools. It's embarrassing and very frustrating."
We would urge Hudson to launch an inquiry into what went wrong with Borts and why North Side remains nothing more than a pool house.