I sent the following letter to Chico Enterprise Record this morning, we’ll see if it gets ink.
Chico Area Recreation District will seek to assess residents in a mailed ballot election, saying they need the money to build an aquatic center and make other improvements in district facilities.
What they are not discussing before the voters is their unfunded pension liability – $1.7 million as of 2014. Management employees pay nothing toward their own retirement.
CARD says Shapiro Pool is beyond repair. That was not the story in 2009, when a consultant reported Shapiro was adequate to handle local demand as well as swim meets, and could be brought up to code for about a half million dollars. At that time, he reported, there were safety code and Americans with Disabilities Act violations – including substandard filtration and sanitation, and trip hazards due to incomplete removal of a diving board.
CARD’s board of directors chose to do nothing. Annual budgets on CARD’s website show very little money has been spent maintaining either public pool over the years.
The ADA was passed in 1990, but CARD only last year commissioned a study, $60,000, to find out just how non-compliant their facilities are, including California Park Lakeside Pavilion. Lakeside Pavilion also has extensive rot damage.
With all these problems, they chose in 2012 to make a $400,000 “side fund payoff” to CalPERS for their pension fund rather than make badly needed repairs to facilities like the Humboldt Skate Park.
Please watch your mail for a ballot and vote NO.
Something else you might do is write to or call CARD, and ask longest standing board member Jan Sneed why she let the swimming pools go without maintenance for so long.
Chico Taxpayers Association 
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