Third in an ongoing series.
The council directed to replace the gas line that heats the McGaugh Swimming Pool during the Strategic Planning meeting. The pool project did not appear to remain a priority with the council.
The direction came after the council and staff discussed the pool during the roughly five-hour long meeting in January. The city still has money set aside for the pool. The council took no formal action on the use of that money, but concerns were raised about the decreasing buying power of the existing funds.
The community swimming pool project officially began in 2008, when a consultant said the pool was near the end of its useful life. In January 2024, Marine Safety Chief Joe Bailey also said the pool was on the end of its useful life. (For a history of the project, visit “Seal Beach swimming pool project: a chronology of events,” at sunnews.org.)
Carol Jacobs of Baker Tilly, who led the Strategic Planning Meeting, said she had heard from everyone about the McGaugh pool.
The conversation that followed sometimes meandered into other subjects. This article focuses on the pool project.
“Everyone wants a pool; everyone is uh terrified of the $18, now the $18.5 million cost of the pool,” Jacobs said.
(In 2008, the estimated cost of replacing the pool was estimated at $5 million.)
“Who would talk about the pool from a staff perspective?” Jacobs asked.
“Iris and I,” said Marine Safety Chief Joe Bailey. He was referring to Public Works Director Iris Lee.
According to Lee, a gas company put the cost of fixing that at $150,000 to $200,000.
She said the city would likely have to go across Seal Beach Boulevard to connect to the gas line.
Bailey took up the gas line issue from there. “Over the last few years we’re at the end of the line from the gas line,” Bailey said.
“The school gets it first and then our heater gets it at the end, so right now our heater is set to be working at half speed because that’s the amount of gas we have and so we get cold water,” Bailey said.
He acknowledged that cold water is difficult this time of year.
“Just to keep it short, there’s two things right now that the pool needs and one is changing rooms and one is this new gas line too if we’re going to keep limping that along,” Bailey said.
“Now that’s not to say the whole thing won’t crack in half next year, because I think we’re there on the useful life of it and that’s why I know the new pool is here,” Bailey said, referring to the list of priorities the council would discuss.
“Having a pool and teaching swim lessons is the number one way to prevent drowning and drowning is the number one cause of death for children 1 to 4,” said Marine Safety Chief Bailey.
“So I’ll leave you with that,” Bailey said.
“You are dealing with the results of prior councils kicking this down the road,” Jacobs said.
“So now it’s in your lap and now it’s $18 million as opposed to $1 million or whatever it would have been when it really needed to be done,” Jacobs said.
“So, again, as you’re thinking about your priorities and where you should be putting your dollars, not making a decision about something is a decision that has a really long-term, heavy, financial impact on the community,” Jacobs said.
She asked Bailey what if the council just did the gas line.
““The gas line is a big Band-Aid,” Bailey said.
“With that, if we were to build a new pool then we would already have the gas line in place,” Bailey said.
“But right now, we have to close some weeks during January, February—sometimes November, depending on the weather—and this would make it so we could keep the temperature in a constant and we could keep the pool open consistently,” Bailey said.
“That along with changing rooms are the two things we need to get done soon to keep it going,” Bailey said.
District Five Councilman Nathan Steele wanted to know how many people use the pool.
“So I don’t have it on the top of my head,” Bailey said.
He said around 300 people pay for the annual pass to the pool.
Bailey said the city had other programs that would allow you to buy 16 swims or 32 swims.
“Then, obviously, we have swim lessons and recreation swim that we expanded greatly this last year with the inflatable obstacle course,” Bailey said.
He said he would get those numbers.
In response to a comment by Jacobs, Bailey said he thought the cost of the new gas line would be included in the $18.5 million estimate for the pool.
“So the big Band-Aid is $200,000,” Jacobs said.
Jacobs asked about the options for the pool.
According to Lee, they would do the gas first if the council gave staff direction to do the entire pool.
Steele asked if the city could use money already set aside for the pool for the gas line.
Someone said yes.
“What’s the current state of the pool?” asked District Two Council Member Tom Moore.
“Is it good for the next five years if we fix the gas line”?” Moore asked.
“The short answer to that is no,” Bailey said.
He said if you walk around the pool, there are cracks and uneven pavement, and the decking has been filled in.
“Water does leak out of the pool, so we lose water because of the shell of the pool,” Bailey said.
“I know this term you may have heard it a bunch but
it’s really at the end of its useful life,” Bailey said.
“And so you know I just want to see it continue and that’s why I’ve asked for this gas line so we can swim year round,” Bailey said.
He said the pool was used every day, year round.
“I don’t know that we will ever have enough money to do the big dream job,” Steele said.
“I can’t imagine a city like Seal Beach not having a pool. That just blows my mind that we could possibly at some point in the future not have a pool, but as I’ve seen and that you’ve explained we’re you know we’re one break down away from having to scuttle the whole thing,” Steele said.
District Three Councilwoman Lisa Landau said someone gave her a copy of the Sun Newspaper from 2011. “It was kind of cool to read through it and they talked about pool and it had five years left of life,” Landau said.
Everyone laughed.
According to Bailey, the city had replaced the heater, shut down the learning pool with the fiberglass shell. He said the shell was shedding fiberglass so the city doesn’t use the pool anymore.
Jacobs said she spoke with many successful restaurant owners about a restaurant at the end of the pier and they all said it wasn’t feasible from a financial standpoint.
According to Jacobs, the money was set aside on council direction and could be set aside for something else.
(The adopted 2023-24 budget set aside $1,395,638 for a pier restaurant and the estimated 2022-2023 budget set aside $4,395,824 for the swimming pool project. See page 68 of the PDF for the adopted 2023-24 budget.)
Moore wanted to know if the money, which came from insurance, was just allocated for the pier.
According to staff, the city can use the money.
There was a brief discussion about a restaurant on the pier before the conversation turned back to the pool project.
“I would tell you that over you know over the years and with all the different studies that have been done at the pool, I don’t think that would be a good use of money,” Bailey said.
He said it would be good money after bad.
Lee said staff had looked into the possibility of rehabilitating the pool. She said study after study came to the conclusion that rehabilitating the pool is not the most effective use of money. She said staff recommended that if the city is going to go forward with the pool, it should be done right.
The conversation then turned to park facilities. That discussion led to another conversation about the shrinking buying power of the city’s various pools of money.
The discussion also went over various options for using the funds.
Councilman Moore said if the pool really was going to cost $18 million, maybe the council should put the money toward the lifeguard station.
“If we can at least make a decision, let’s use this money constructively for one thing,” Moore said.
Later in the meeting, using colored dots, council members indicated which projects they want staff to prioritize. A new gas line for the McGaugh swimming pool received four votes.
Near the end of the meeting, Jacobs suggested that City Manager Jill Ingram and Finance Director Barbara Arenado go back and think about what the council had been talking about.
That conversation included a pier restaurant, and how much money did the city want to set aside for a pool or a Lifeguard headquarters. She suggested having the staff come back with a plan about how the financing of those things would work.
