Oak Park voters overwhelmingly rejected the Park District of Oak Park’s proposal to raise millions for a new indoor pool in the village.
The measure failed March 17 in a landslide defeat, with more than 76% of Oak Park voters voting “no” on the referendum question. Just under 16,900 Oak Parkers voted on the issue, good for a 40% turnout in the village as Democratic primary elections for U.S. senator and U.S. representative drove people to the polls.
Oak Park had the largest turnout of any suburban Cook County referendum election, according to county records.
The park district was seeking voter approval to sell $40 million in bonds to fund construction of a new indoor aquatic center at Ridgeland Common while eliminating the decades old Ridgeland Common outdoor pool in the process.
The push to replace the outdoor pool at Ridgeland Common with an indoor facility came as a surprise to many in the village.
The park district board unanimously approved placing a referendum on the ballot last December. Jan Arnold, the park’s executive director, said Wednesday the proposal presented to voters was the “most fiscally responsible” plan for delivering a new indoor pool for Oak Park, which park district leaders had identified as a strong desire in the community.
“Referendums are designed to ask the voters if they support raising taxes and a benefit of going to referendum and asking allows us to allow the community to vote on what they value, so they have spoken that they would rather have the three months of outdoor pool time at Ridgeland instead of a 12-month pool there,” she said. “The approach was for the park district board to make a decision in regards to what was the most fiscally responsible decision going forward, and then put it to the voters and say, ‘here’s what we think is the most fiscally responsible, do you want it yes or no?’”
“People have said for years that they want to have a vote when it comes to raising taxes for a project, and that’s exactly what the park district board did,” she said.
Voters on Tuesday told Wednesday Journal they didn’t want to support funding for an indoor pool at the cost of losing of an existing outdoor pool.
“I don’t like the idea of getting rid of an outdoor pool and I think it’s going to be way more expensive than they are projecting,” Oak Parker Roberta Arnold said after voting at Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School. “I think it’s going to cost a lot of money to maintain an indoor pool and it’s going to use a lot of energy.”
There is no other site in Oak Park that’s viable for an indoor pool, Arnold said.
“The reality is that from a green space (perspective), our community is lacking,” Arnold said. “Taking over a park was not ever in the mix.”
Arnold attributed the decisive vote in part to residents’ “nostalgia” for the Ridgeland Common outdoor pool.
“There was a lot of nostalgia for Ridgeland Common and that played out and that’s okay,” Arnold said.
The park district will need to address the aging infrastructure at Ridgeland Common’s outdoor pool in the coming years, she said. There is “$10 million worth of work that’s going to have to be done at Ridgeland Common,” in the near future, Arnold said.
“The park district will move forward with the need to bring in professionals in a few years to start talking about what that new, Ridgeland Common outdoor pool will look like,” she said. “The park district board said from day one that this was a community decision, and therefore the community has made the decision, and we will move forward with our capital improvement plan, looking at how we invest, and plan for, prepare for investing the necessary funds to keep Ridgeland Common operational as an outdoor pool.”