Douglass Park Ribbon Cutting

The City of Middletown’s Division of Parks and Recreation would like to invite the community to the opening of the newest addition to one of our city parks.  The Ribbon Cutting Ceremony for the Frederick Douglass Park Splash Pad will be Thursday, June 25th at 11:30 a.m.

For more information on the ceremony see the full press release here  Middletown's Douglass Park

I just left the ceremony at Douglass Park, It was pretty packed and the kids were very happy. I meet City Manager Judy Gilleland, Council Members,Leslie Ford ward 2 and Jim Armbruster ward 1
I took some nice pictures of the ribbon cutting. Look for them tomorrow.

randy- are you still in a good mood after meeting with Gilleland,Ford and Armbruster? Hasn't ruined you afternoon yet? If so, you have more patience than I do.

No vietvet It did ruin my day lol although I dont agree with their polices as people they are ok. And the Splash Pads are for the kids so...I am ok with that.

Merrell- I understand and appreciate your passion for providing a recreational destination for the citizens of this community. I also appreciate your SOS group's efforts to "keep Sunset alive" by doing the fundraiser activities. I just question spending any city money on a project like Sunset that benefits so few as to the percentage of city population. For a city that is economically strapped, I would be looking very closely at the costs of each city money outlay and examining the benefits for that money outlay. Concrete beneficial evidence would need to be presented to impress me on this. At this time, I couldn't justify city money being spent on this based on the number of people that Sunset serves. I would imagine that if you had 8000 people attend in a normal swimming season at Sunset, that at least 3000 are repeat customers. That cuts the percentage of the city population usage of the pool way down and makes it even harder to justify keeping it open. Just not enough interest from the citizens. On another note- what is the cost for water for the splash pad at Douglass Park for a normal swimming season? OR is there no cost? Backyard pools have taken a toll on community pool participation even at $2.50 a head. It's just more convenient to walk to the backyard ( or to the neighborhood backyard pool) than to drive to Sunset and one doesn't have to deal with strangers with foul mouths. Hey- I like Sunset too. Use to swim there when I was a kid some 50 years ago.- BUT- maybe the economics of the time is making the decision for us to close it.

As promised here are the pictures from yesterdays ribbon cutting

Middletown's Ribbon cutting At Douglass Park

Thank you for the information Merrell. I mentioned the repeat customers because it does make a difference on how one looks at the pool usage. If there are 8000 individual people interested in using the pool, the citizen interest/ percentage looks a little different than if you tell me that 8000 people used the pool but 3000 were repeat visitors. The latter tells me that there is a lesser interest in the number of individuals. The numbers are skewed when comparing the two scenarios. The same goes for Weatherwax. If you tell me that 9000 golfers used the course over the summer, I may be impressed and say it is worthwhile to operate. But if you tell me that out of that 9000, 4000 were repeat visitors, that shows that there is more interest from fewer people using the facility. May not impress me enough to vote to keep it open. Learning to swim is a good thing to accomplish. No argument here. But we're talking about the cost from a poor city, to maintain a pool to teach a few kids to swim. It becomes an economic budgetary numbers game rather than a quality of life thing as you suggest. Even with the presence of cops/ pool personel, it still doesn't look good when trying to impress a person to take their family there. A precedent has been set, unfortunately. Why go through all the hassle when a person can take the family over to a friend's house with a pool and relax instead of preventing the kids from being bothered by "undesirables". No relaxation there for the parents. Disagree with the statement " not all recreational destinations should be or can be a direct profit center for the city" and " when the cost is kept low"- in a normal city, I would probably agree with you on this, but the people running this city have it so financially screwed up ( and in other ways too) that the pool MUST make money to justify it's existence. This city can't afford any luxuries and must be managed as if the leaders were "unemployed", monitoring every last dime. (They don't but they should be) Right now, we need "depression era" people running the city. They know how to pinch pennies having lived through that travesty. Moving to town comment- I've heard realtors say that attractions, when buying in a town, include shopping, commuter time to the job, good schools, location, tax rates, housing stock choices, closeness to more choices in bigger cities, etc, but rarely have I heard a realtor include a public pool as a big buying point for purchasing property in a certain location. Guess we can agree to disagree as the saying goes.---- but- that's ok too!    I vote we close Sunset and Weatherwax because they benefit but a small percentage of Middletown's population and start redirecting the money to the basics rather than the luxuries. JMO

I have to agree with Vet and Mike on this one.  I have never heard of a Pool that can be used only two months of the Year being a Quality of Life issue that would prevent someone from buying a house in Middletown.  Lots of other issues might but not having a pool is not one of them.

Merrell how much money will have to be raised next year considering the AK money is gone after this year?

What fuzzy math I estimated in my post above about $50-60k you say about $60K sounds like we are pretty much on the same page with that figure.