In the Aug. 7 Viewpoints section, (“Finishing the job”), the author sings the praises of the Park District of Oak Park (PDOP) and promotes building Phase 2 of the Community Recreation Center (CRC), which would include an indoor lap pool and a warm-water therapy pool. Yet the author glosses over a key sticking point to building Phase 2: a huge indoor pool (up to 17 practice lanes) is already under construction in Oak Park.
The 40-yard x 25-yard pool dominates Project 2 at Oak Park and River Forest High School. The pool/PE addition has a staggering price tag of over $100 million, including construction and borrowing costs, and taxpayers are on the hook paying for it for the next 20 years even though they never approved its funding. The board refused to follow best practice and put the funding on the ballot, opting for a controversial funding loophole instead.
The letter’s author references OPRF and the swim community’s desire for feeder swim programs to use Project 2’s pool after the school’s aquatic teams finish practice, which would severely limit community usage. But that’s not right, and it certainly isn’t fair.
Taxpayers, the community at large, who are being forced to pay for the OPRF pool, should have the greatest access to it once the school’s use concludes every day, not private swim clubs. Accordingly, there is no need for taxpayers to pay for another pool, a lap pool at the CRC, when they should have considerable daily access to “their” 17-lane lap pool at OPRF, set to be completed in 2026.
Monica Sheehan
Oak Park