Swimmers make last splash

Thursday’s crowd at the Comstock swimming pool felt a little blue from the news.

At 4:30 p.m. today, Spokane’s six outdoor municipal pools will close for the season. The wading pools will close when it grows dark Sunday.

Mothers sitting on benches and blankets outside the pool fence Thursday said the closures seemed early this year. They didn’t see it coming.

Dena Allen, who came with her two daughters, heard the news from a friend as she was leaving. “I had no clue,” Allen said.

She grew up playing in the water with her mother watching. Now she wanted that experience for her two daughters. Only as she walked out did she realize it was the end of this year’s summer pool experience at Comstock. She has to work today.

“Maybe your dad can take you,” she told her daughters.

The ice cream man who putters by most days at 4 p.m. said the pool closures will put a dent in his sale of treats like bubblegum swirls.

Five-year-old Nathan Neumiller expressed some serious displeasure with his tears when his mother told him, “Tomorrow will be the last day you will go swimming here.”

He held his Mickey Mouse towel a little tighter, dipped his head and said, “Not good.”

“Nathan, you don’t have to cry,” said his mother, Dawn Neumiller.

Every day this week, she’s brought three of her children to the pool as a reward for attending a backyard Bible club.

“They would stay in the pool until their lips turn blue,” Neumiller said.

Parent Mike McGonigle couldn’t believe the pools were closing. “I kind of thought they’d go till Labor Day,” McGonigle said. “They’re closing kind of early.”

While the hot weather may make it seem like the pools are closing early, the schedule is just as it was for the past two years, said Sarah Ranson, aquatics director of the Spokane Parks and Recreation Department.

“The budget (which determines the schedule) was already set for us prior to the summer season,” Ranson said. She’s fielded maybe a dozen calls from people who wanted to know why the pools were closing “early.”

What hampers a longer season is the availability of workers. Seventy-five percent of summer pool employees are college students who must leave for school, Ranson said. Another 12 percent are high school students who start their fall sports practices Monday. The city of Spokane is also struggling with the budget, she said.

“I really wish I could open them longer,” Ranson said. “I’m sympathetic to the feedback I’m getting.”