School pools reprieve welcome, but long-term solution imperative
The school pools provide many benefits to the neighbourhoods in which they are located - to students and the community at large - but are costly to operate and maintain. The Toronto District School Board is not in the business of providing aquatic programming for community residents and has balked in recent years at the escalating costs associated with keeping pools open year round. It has become an especially sensitive fiscal issue for school boards that continue to struggle with provincial funding figures overall.
But the pools do, indeed, serve the communities in which they are located and should have other sources of stable and committed funding to ensure that those residents can benefit from their use. And the old saw about there only being one taxpayer certainly applies in this case: residents don't particularly care which public funds are directed towards their local facility, they just want to be able to use it.
Having noted that, the temporary solution brought forth last week - an injection of one-time provincial funding in the amount of $4 million to keep the pools open for another year - is encouraging.
Also stirring optimism about a long-term solution to the pools issue are the recommendations tabled by former Toronto mayor David Crombie last week. Among his recommendations are directives to carry out a complete inventory of pools available for community use and the level of demand for programs; an audit of the state of repair on a pool-by-pool basis; identifying community partners that might ease the fiscal burden on the public purse; and an exploration of alternative energy options to drastically reduce the operating costs of the pools.
All of the recommendations address the longer term and, if implemented, should go a long way toward eliminating the annual hand-wringing that has occurred at budget time when pool funding is on the agenda.
It's clear that the Toronto District School Board cannot provide sustained funding for pools beyond their educational mandate. Nor should it be solely responsible for funding pools that are used extensively by the community.
To that end, it's time for the city and province to resist the lure of one-time funding schemes that only delay the debate and serve political interests, and instead negotiate a plan that works for everyone over the long term.
