The city bills its Goodman Pool as a great way to "beat the heat." One recent notice advised: "Don't let the dog days of summer get you down. Get outside and enjoy yourself while staying cool at the pool!"
Susan Morrison doesn't need convincing. She and her family have a season pass and go to the pool almost every day. But Morrison was stunned last Sunday afternoon, a hot, humid day, when staff members told her the pool would be closing early, after rainstorms reduced attendance earlier that day.
"Because they lost money in the morning, they were going to close it early because they could not afford to keep it open," she says. And people arriving at the pool were leaving rather than pay the $3.25-$5 entrance fee for a shortened pool day. "I was pretty unhappy, and there were lots of other people there unhappy."
Spokeswoman Whitmore says the pool closed because attendance was too low: "We can't be open if we're not making money." But Parks superintendent Kevin Briski says, on reflection, that the policy needs to be revisited.
"We should have given more consideration to the fact that it was warm and humid with three hours left in the day," he says. "We made a mistake."
