No, Debbie Presson is not going to post the 460’s – is she doing it on purpose? or just incompetent?

4 Aug

Here’s the original post from October 2014 –

Juanita Sumner's avatarChico Taxpayers Association

RE: CPOA 460 late, no reports available online

Debbie Presson
Attachment
10/23/14

Documents

To: Chris Constantin, Mark Sorensen, Mark Orme, dlittle@chicoer.com
Cc: juanita sumner
1 attachment (1484.4 KB)
Download 2014_Political Reform Act.pdf (1484.4 KB)
2014_Political Reform Act.pdf
View online
Download as zip

I would like to respond to Ms. Sumner’s latest email regarding a process that is regulated by the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC).   While I don’t expect Ms. Sumner to print my response nor include the documents that are attached (which have been OCR’d in order for the reader to copy and paste from the documents), I feel it is important to respond so that accurate information (with documentation) can be presented to the public instead of being provided with vitriol that is not meant to inform our citizenry but instead to disparage those individuals Ms. Sumner writes about.   I also recognize by trying to provide this information that I only open myself up to…

View original post 1,004 more words

Presson responds

3 Aug

I posted city councilman Randall Stones efforts to get city clerk Debbie Presson to return the campaign contribution reports to the website.

https://chicotaxpayers.com/2015/07/29/thanks-to-councilman-randall-stone-for-taking-city-clerk-debbie-presson-to-task-over-her-refusal-to-post-the-campaign-reports/

Here’s the link to his Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/ElectStone/posts/732600713534996?comment_id=733024570159277&offset=0&total_comments=22&notif_t=feed_c

Last week Presson responded to his accusations as though he was out of line for bringing this to the attention of the public. 

From the Enterprise Record, last week:

“I think it’s very unfortunate in light of what this organization has been trying to do for the last few years, which is to rebuild public trust, to have one of the elected officials go out there and imply wrongdoing has occurred without talking to me,” Presson said.

Now,  remember, this woman is the one who is supposed to be bringing things to the attention of the public. Tsk tsk. She has not been working on rebuilding public trust, she’s used the public trust like a Depends.

Debbie Presson has created a hostile environment for the citizens Downtown, and if you complain, she tries to throw it on you. When I complained about the campaign reports disappearing from the website last year I got this response (the red ink is hers, I just cut and paste it exactly as she sent it):

https://chicotaxpayers.com/2014/10/24/yeah-debbie-presson-is-a-bitch-and-shes-not-going-to-post-the-460s-is-she-doing-it-on-purpose-or-just-incompetent/

Yes, I call names. I can’t afford to buy a mouthpiece so I have to use my own. I have to browbeat these (excuse me) assholes into doing their job. Sorry, but whatever works. You got a better idea, get your ass in there and show me up. Randall Stone isn’t getting any Brownie points for doing it without obscenities, that’s for sure. 

But, he has apparently got Ms. Presson to return some of the reports to the website. She’s only posted 2005 – 2012, with 2007 left curiously out. No reports for the 2014. In fact, they are supposed to file those reports on a regular basis between elections. Why aren’t they posted?

In that previous post, I asked, does she do this on purpose, or is she incompetent? Several folks are having a conversation on Stone’s Facebook to the effect that the city of Chico is behind in the technology. I think that’s true, and I think one man is right – Presson keeps it that way on purpose. She does everything she can to block the public from getting public information.

What’s maddening is, Presson makes no apologies for being incompetent, she uses it as an excuse. 

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New ordinance, new salaries – same old problems – how do we get Chico PD to do their job?

3 Aug
When I went to the Airport Commission meeting last week I noticed somebody had taken up residence outside the front door of City Hall.

When I went to the Airport Commission meeting last week I noticed somebody had taken up residence outside the front door of City Hall.

Anybody who frequents Downtown, Midtown, and Lower Bidwell Park has noticed more homeless, or “street” people than ever. They have firm encampments at City Hall, City Plaza, the Vallombrosa post office annex, and throughout Bidwell Park. They mill up and down Mangrove and Vallombrosa Avenues around the Safeway shopping center.   As you get away from the city center and the park,  you see them alone or in pairs, moving along the main corridors of town, congregating wherever they can get cash for recyclables, or be out of the sight of passing cops, like the parking lot behind Raley’s on East Avenue.

The problem being, most of us have a hard time separating the truly needy from the hardpan criminals. Having observed the little mob that congregates at the recycling facility behind East Avenue Raleys, I was shocked to hear a report that a couple of them had got in a fight in broad daylight and one man had produced some sort of blade and stabbed the other.  That got my attention – I’ve parked my car on that side of the store since I had toddlers in hand.  

We see them regularly in our old midtown neighborhood now, they seem to be following the freeway across town. Our immediate neighbors, including a large church, noticed a brief upswing in crime, with some cars broken into and reports of bicycles stolen from garages. A car was broken into across the street from our house, again in broad daylight.  One afternoon not long after that, my husband and I encountered a woman out in front of our house who had just caught a couple of men in her garage with their hands on her son’s bike. She had chased them out and then got into her car to see which direction they’d headed. She said they had one bike of their own, and both jumped on it fleeing her garage. She was unable to follow them.  

This is a pattern I recognize all over town, don’t you?  Watch the local news – people have caught daytime break-ins on their security cameras. Full faces are shown. No arrests have been made that I’ve heard of, not since they got  the kid who was breaking into schools months ago. I haven’t heard of anybody getting their stolen property back either. 

The authorities have always acted as though a car break-in is the victim’s fault, especially in the park. Sometimes valuables have been left in plain sight, sometimes cars are smashed and rifled and nothing noticeable is taken. It’s as though you are stupid to leave your car unattended anywhere, including your own driveway. 

I’ve been shopping for mosquito netting – the other day I saw a screen that is specially made for your big garage door, with zipper openings big enough to get your car in and out. Great idea – airing your garage will cool down your house. But who would leave their garage open and untended around here?

 Did you know, local policeman Peter Durfee is the president not only of the Chico Police Officers’ Association (which is also a political PAC) but also the Chico Realtors Association? Durfee is a realtor? Wow, where does he find the time?  

Durfee is the officer who occasionally gets sick of the criticism of Chico PD and goes on a tear Downtown harassing street people. Not that I mind – he’s supposed to harass people for breaking the law. Anytime he’s felt like it, he’s managed to find about a violation every six feet – the sit and lie ordinance the cops screamed for is very specific. I see violations every time I go out. 

The picture above I took last week at City Hall at about 6:30 pm Wednesday.  There’s almost always a bed  laying in this spot. It still lay there when we exited the Airport Commission meeting, so my husband  snapped a picture of it. As we were leaving the little portico, a bedraggled man came round to see what we were doing. He smiled his drunken smile and greeted us with a tinge of fear – were we going to give him a bad time?   No, that’s not our job. At least one cop and more than a half dozen staffers, including city manager Mark Orme, had passed that bedding on their way into the chamber. He had been smoking in the non-smoking area when we arrived, and was still smoking when we came out. 

I get such a kick out of City Council, I’d really like to return the favor sometime, right in the seat of Mark Sorensen’s pants. They wasted hours of $taff time and passed that stupid sit and lie ordinance despite the fact they’d passed a similar ordinance years before that wasn’t being enforced. Now we see the same with sit and lie. Council also gave the cops very generous raises in exchange for paying three percent more of their pension – 12 percent. Out of salaries in excess of $100,000, they pay 12 percent of  pensions comprising 90 percent of  their highest year’s salary, available at age 50.

I predict Durfee will retire at 50, and then I predict he will make a run for city council. I predict he will be our mayor someday.

Just about the time our town is poised to go straight  down the shitter. Good luck Pete! 

 

 

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CARD continues to run aquatic center committee behind closed doors

1 Aug

I attended a 3pm Chico Recreation District meeting at California Park Pavilion Thursday to find out that a committee selected at a  closed meeting had interviewed consultants to do a “feasibility study” on behalf of the proposed aquatic center. Their findings – nobody would do it for the $30,000 offered, so they had to up the ante to $50,000.

What this “feasibility study” will include is a guess because they won’t include me in the meetings where they actually discuss it. When I asked staffer Rob Hinderer why I wasn’t noticed for the interviews he replied,

Juanita, good morning!

 There was no AFAC Meeting. There were interviews with the RFP respondents. An interview panel was formed. They were the only persons present at the interviews other than myself and CARD GM, Ann Willmann.

 When the RFP decision is made, I will send out invites to all AFAC members, yourself included, to share the outcome of the RFP.

 Thank you,

 Rob

The last AFAC meeting I was noticed about started late because many of the members didn’t show up. When the meeting started, there was confusion – several of the members wanted to talk about the deplorable condition of Sharpiro and Pleasant Valley pools, and when they would be repaired. They were told those options would be included in the “feasibility study”, but of course, we haven’t seen the study.  The conversation was all over the place, I had to leave about 40 minutes into the meeting. They were supposed to discuss the Request for Proposals that had been sent out to consultants, but Rob Hinderer was still trying to pull the meeting together when I left. 

This 3pm Wednesday  meeting was called to discuss the annual budget. The AFAC matter was part of it because they had to agree on how much to budget for this “feasibility study.” The three consultants who showed up to be interviewed said they couldn’t do a good study for less than $50,000. An ad-hoc committee had talked about $75,000, but agreed on $60,000,  because they wanted to be sure they would have plenty of money to cover it, without having to ask for budget allocations. I don’t think that was the right tack – now they will not have to discuss cost overruns before the public, they just have the money there in a pot to spend it. Oh well. 

That’s why they had this meeting at 3pm on a Thursday at the Cal Park clubhouse, Lakeside Pavillion, instead of at a regularly scheduled meeting at the CARD center. Board president Jan Sneed has taken CARD behind closed doors because she knows they’re playing fast and loose with taxpayer money. 

Sneed tried to act the fiscal conservative. When a board member moved to approve the $75,000 expenditure, she held out for $60,000, just to show us what a penny pincher she is.

Well, she’s skeletized CARD with layoffs because they can’t afford to pay benefits for their workers. New CARD director Ann Willman, an ex-CARD employee who left a couple of years ago to take the helm at Feather River Rec in O’ville, is back in Chico at just over $100,000, according to the Enterprise Record. Her replacement in Oroville gets $70,000, and refused the benefits package because she said her husband already has one on his job. I think they were offering her a $5,000 benefits package. Willman’s predecessor Steve Visconti and most CARD management get packages that cost around  $25 – 30,000/year. 

I don’t know what Willman really makes because new state controller Betty Yee has taken down John Chiang’s  salary database. Now we have to believe what these public employees tell us, and well, you know they will lie to us.  They’re ashamed.

And I’m back on the same merry-go-round with Willmann that I rode with her predecessor Visconti. Here’s the last e-mail I received from outgoing Visconti:

From: svisconti@chicorec.com
To: juanita sumner
Subject: RE: intergovernmental committee
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2015 16:17:41 +0000

Ms. Sumner, you are correct. The Intergovernmental meetings are generally on an as needed basis. The most recent meeting was with the City Manager to discuss a few issues related to the City budget and certain fees they collect that CARD has utilized in the past to construct new park improvements. I will notify our new General Manager Ann Willmann that you would like to be noticed on future Intergovernmental Meetings. She will be starting on July 6th.

 As far as meeting reports, I will notify Ms. Marciales as soon as she returns to the office the week of July 6th.

 Thank you for your inquiry.

 Steve Visconti

Interim General Manager

July 6 came and went, I got no response from either Willman or Marciales. Jennifer Marciales seems to think she’s paid to do her fingernails.  So, when I went to the meeting Thursday, I was surprised when a human potato walked up to greet me in my chair – “Are you Juanita?” It was Willmann, who had put on a bigger rearend since I had seen her last. I know the Oroville job was rough – Feather River Rec has been in financial arrears for some time, and then there was the incident involving a teenage boy, a camera, and a girl’s toilet. That didn’t play well for Willman, I’m guessing she ran back to Chico crying for Mama.

I repeated my request to Willmann and she gave me her business card, telling me to e-mail her. By law, she’s supposed to have these reports on hand for anybody who requests them, but I played along because the room was full of unfriendly people by that time. I e-mailed her promptly the next morning. 

From: juanita sumner
Sent: Friday, July 31, 2015 5:26 AM
To: Ann Willmann <annw@chicorec.com>
Cc: Jennifer Marciales <jmarciales@chicorec.com>
Subject: RE: intergovernmental committee

 Hi Ms. Willmann,

 I’m glad you gave me your e-mail – as you know, most card e-mail address are first initial, last name. I see where that would be confusing to people trying to get ahold of you.

 As I asked Mr. Visconti below, I’d like to get the report of the last Intergovernmental meeting, which Mr. Visconti had told me Ms. Marciales would contact me about.

 I’d also like to get on the notice list for the Intergovernmental meetings, as I had asked.

 Thanks for your anticipated cooperation, Juanita Sumner

And here’s what I got back – sounds like the same bullshit runaround to me.

From: annw@chicorec.com
To: juanita sumner
CC: jmarciales@chicorec.com; 
Subject: RE: intergovernmental committee
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2015 16:50:13 +0000

Dear Juanita, thank you for your email. I will follow up on your requests and also ensure you are on the requested notification lists. Have a lovely weekend. Ann

In my past experience, this is a brush off, and I won’t hear from this woman again unless I put a hornet up her ass. We’ll see. 

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Airport consultant just looking for a meal ticket

30 Jul

I went to the Airport Commission meeting the other night to hear a couple of reports and frankly, my head is swimming so full of bullshit I have a hard time putting it into words. 

Excuse me – Frank Fields’ budget report was no bullshit, just straight facts. Frank was detailing the actions that led to essential bankruptcy out at the airport – the airport fund has been completely in the red the last few years, despite a million dollar infusion from the feds every year. Frank explained that the airport fund has been pilfered by way of an initiative passed by council – “cost allocation.”

“cost allocation” is the system by which you steal money from one fund to pay salaries from another department. I sat through that meeting – Chris Constantin explained that every time they have a meeting, they pay staff out of the fund they’re talking about at the meeting, get it? So if they discuss the sewer at an Internal Affairs meeting, the staffers present at that meeting get paid out of the sewer fund. And the electricity for the room, the coffee, Dani Brinkley’s foot wear, the whole nine yards, comes out of the sewer fund. That, by the way, is also how the sewer fund, and the development fund,  ended up in the red to the tune of a million dollars or so a piece.

Then Fields explained another measure passed by council – when a fund is in the red, staff now takes money out of the General Fund to cover it.  And the books are good! 

I think we missed all this. I’m guessing they were threatened with some sort of punishment if they didn’t come up with a better set of books, so here we are. They had too much red ink in their books, and you know what that looks like.  On Perry Mason it’s called embezzlement.

Despite the fact that the city gets about a million dollars a year in federal grants to keep it open for the fire fighting planes, the airport fund is still in the red every year because of the cost allocation bullshit. They haven’t been putting any money into the airport. If you listened really carefully to Tom, the $190,000 consultant from AVPorts consulting firm, you find the real reason we don’t have commercial air service is we have no terminal, and our runway is inadequate. He really slid those by, talking instead about how we need to give him a contract to attract the airlines. He didn’t want to give us too much bad news at once.  He wants us to hire him to do a job he admittedly can’t do. 

We don’t have commercial air service because we haven’t been keeping our airport up to modern standards. We’ll need a new tower, a longer runway, and a brand new fancy terminal. We’ll also need to guarantee them a certain amount of profit – or pay them an “incentive” charge of hundreds of thousands a year. 

But Tom went on and on, getting really excited toward the end of his presentation. While he admitted our chances of getting commercial service were really poor, he kept saying we have to try. 

The major obstacle being – Redding has already done all the stuff above. He expects us to steal customers from Redding, that’s the only way his scheme will work. 

I’ve got pages of notes on this guy – I’ll boil it down for you. Watch “Music Man.” 

And I’ll tell you what else – the feds are going to walk away with their million a year if we don’t make major infrastructural improvements out there. We won’t even have the fire fighting planes if $taff doesn’t quit embezzling that fund to pay their pensions off. 

Orme isn’t telling us everything. He’s sitting on a pile of trouble, I hope it goes right up his ass.

Here’s what I think – why pander after the airlines? Why not wait until they are knocking on our door? 

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Thanks to councilman Randall Stone for taking city clerk Debbie Presson to task over her refusal to post the campaign reports

29 Jul

A year or so ago I got into an ugly bitch fight with Chico City Clerk Debbie Presson over the posting of the campaign contribution reports on the website. For starters she was letting the cops go months beyond the report deadline with their PAC filing, letting them get off without paying the per-day fine. I quit when I felt she was trying to set me up for some sort of harassment suit. I also got e-mails from Stephanie Taber and Sean Morgan telling me I needed to “back off” of Presson. I started to feel like I might have the makings of a suit myself, but I’m not that kind of person.

Now it looks like Presson has taken everything off the website and requires people to physically present themselves in her office at her convenience to view the physical records. That’s view – if you want copies you will pay per page. 

Council member Randall Stone has taken up this issue with a Facebook posting here:

https://www.facebook.com/ElectStone/posts/732600713534996?comment_id=733024570159277&offset=0&total_comments=22&notif_t=feed_comment

I’m going to go on a little rant here. 

Debbie Presson is not fit for public office. She uses her position, in which she is supposed to protect the voters, to protect herself and her coworkers. Instead of working in the voter’s best interests, she furthers the best interests of herself and her friends. She uses her position to cover corruption, and that’s corrupt. 

Furthermore, I’ll say, the city charter needs to be changed so that the city clerk is elected like the county clerk is elected. Things might be different if her $135,000 salary, plus health benefits and pension, were on the line every four years.  I notice county clerk Candace Grubbs’ office is a lot more responsive. Grubbs also has plenty of help – Presson cut her staff and took a larger salary, but has the nerve to tell us she’s shorthanded! 

I see Stone has got a discussion going on this issue – at last, some sunshine in the sewer that is Downtown  Chico.

 

 

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Attorney General Kamala Harris is investigating former CPUC president Michael Peevey – so far CPUC has spent $5 million (of our money!) on attorneys

28 Jul

According to the Sacramento Bee, “Attorney General Kamala Harris’ office is investigating former President Michael Peevey, and perhaps other current and former commission employees, and the CPUC is paying an outside law firm, Sheppard Mullin, to represent it.”

The Bee also says “The commission entered into the contract [with Sheppard Mullin] in November 2014, claiming it was for $49,000 [as stated in the above linked story]; the contract since has ballooned to $5 million-plus.”

Former CPUC president Michael Peevey, who stepped down amid a scandal involving his inappropriate relationship with PG&E, will pay his own attorneys – I’m sure he has plenty of dough! “…internal PG&E emails show Peevey sought a $1 million PG&E donation to combat a ballot measure in 2010, while the commission considered issues related to PG&E, including the 2010 gas line explosion that killed 38 people in San Bruno.

Southern California Edison disclosed that Peevey asked Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric to donate $25 million to fund a center at UCLA, as the commission was deciding how to apportion the $4.8 billion in costs of shutting the San Onofre nuclear power plant.”

These people are so shameless.

The Bee asks, “But why does a public agency with nothing to hide need a team of criminal defense lawyers to represent it against another public agency that is seeking to determine whether there has been wrongdoing? What sort of precedent does this set?”

This precedent will become the way it is as long as the public fails to act.

If you don’t attend another meeting all year, here are a couple that would be worth your time

26 Jul

Two meetings I will attend this week are the Airport Commission meeting on Tuesday (July 28) at city chambers, 6pm, and a CARD budget meeting Thursday (July 30) at 3pm at Lakeside Pavilion out at Cal Park.

The Airport Commission will be discussing the airport budget, with a report from consultants AFCO AvPORTS (sic). AFCO is working under a $190,000 contract. They will report on their efforts to get commercial air service back to Chico Airport.

I’m curious to see what they could possibly add to the conversation that Chico Chamber director Katy Simmons has not already told us. Here’s my guess  – they want about $300,000 allocated from the city’s general fund to pay a new airport manager. Then they want hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money, spent over the next five or so years, with no guarantee that commercial air service will be restored.

First there’s the matter of a $60,000 study as to “who flies out of the airport and where they go“. This seems to have been answered in a recent survey done by the Chamber, in which only about 60 individuals indicated they used the airport on anything resembling a regular basis. Why the city continues to pursue this avenue is anybody’s guess.

CARD will discuss their budget, looking for public comment, and I hope they get it. But, I’m not expecting many attendees at a 3 pm weekday meeting in Cal Park. CARD staff and the board seem to be bending over backwards to keep the public out of their meetings.

One budget issue that screams for public comment is the study they want to fund for the aquatic center – the price has jumped from about $30,000 to about $75,000. Yeah, for a study.

I would hope to see some other members of the public at these meetings.

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Recent state court ruling “a disappointment” to water districts hoping to use drought as an excuse to raise rates

24 Jul

I read a piece in today’s Sacramento Bee, written by Dave Kasler – “Court won’t budge over water”. 

Kasler writes, “the state Supreme Court has kept intact a ruling that makes it harder for municipalities to impose tiered pricing to discourage heavy water use.” Governor Jerry Brown was quoted as saying the ruling represents a “potential strait jacket” for regulators. 

The court cites Proposition 218, a ballot measure passed in 1996 that forbids municipalities from charging fees that represent more than the actual cost of providing the water. In other words, these water utilities can’t use the drought to make an extra profit, like they’ve been trying to do.

While the decision came out of a case involving the city of San Juan Capistrano, it looks like it will also affect all water districts in the state.  “What was particularly alarming to state officials was that the court of appeal ‘published’ its decision, extending it’s impact to the whole state.”

San Juan Capistrano will have to make refunds to customers, but, this may not be the end of gratuitous rate increases. The ruling allows rate increases as long as “they tie their rates to cost to comply with Prop 218.” Ask yourself, exactly what is meant by costs?  The notice we got in 2013 included over $300,000 for pensions, and $165,000 for infrastructure. They consider their own pensions to be our cost.

Compliance seems to be up to the water district. For example, “Sacramento Suburban Water District said it thinks it’s tiered pricing complies with the court ruling.”    Uh-huh, sure it does Honey.

These agencies are “quasi public” and should have to show their books. We should know exactly how much they spend on themselves, and we should know what the investors are getting. We need our city officials to stick up for us like the city of Selma, near Fresno. 

“[City manager Ken]Grey explained, ‘It’s a grave disappointment to the city of Selma to see this kind of an increase, it draws into question the operational aspects of Cal Water providing services to the city of Selma and certainly the city council is going to have to give consideration to whether or not they continue this relationship with California Water Services.'”

In fact, one city council member is calling for the city to buy the utility right out of town. Read more at Marysville for Reasonable Water Rates:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Marysville-For-Reasonable-Water-Rates/176321489194208?fref=nf

That’s really a discussion Chico needs to have, now. If you dig through a pile of crap Downtown, you might find the reports regarding the clean-up of wells around town – wells used to make a profit by Cal Water, cleaned at the expense of the city, the taxpayers, the ratepayers.  Now that the city has foot the bill to clean all the wells, just what “infrastructure” is Cal Water intending to fix?

Remember people, if you want Accountability, you have to provide it yourself. 

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At last, somebody is paying attention to CARD aquatic center discussion

23 Jul

At last somebody is paying attention to the CARD aquatic center discussion. Enterprise Record letter writer Sam Goepp raises the reality that CARD’s proposed aquatic center will never pay for itself – out going CARD board member Ed Seagle made that statement repeatedly in early discussions of this project, but the rest of the board didn’t listen.

Mr. Goepp hasn’t seen the proposals, because CARD hasn’t been public with this discussion. They are planning the amenities he’s listed below, with cost estimates up to about $20 million dollars. I think their estimates are low, this project will go millions in overrun. They’ve already more than  doubled the price on the feasibility study, from around $30,000 to $75,000. Tom Lando wants the city of Chico to take money out of the park fund to pay for it. 

Thanks to Sam Goepp for paying attention and taking the time to write a letter to the paper.

from Chico Enterprise Record:

CARD needs to admit to aquatic center realities

I cannot bite my tongue any longer after reading about CARD allocating more than $30,000 to pay for an aquatic consultant to tell them what they can learn through professionals for free. Simple facts about public pools: 90 percent of people want to be in water 3 feet or less while 10 percent of swimmers are competitive or lap swimmers.

So who do you build a pool for? The general public or a special-interest group that will be vocal about the economic benefits and their willingness to contribute? Then once the costs to operate exceed $750,000 annually, everyone will be in shock as to the expense to operate without any true revenue generated by the aquatic facility.

The comment that the city of Chico has $3.6 million in the park fund gives the impression they think city money belongs to CARD. Keep in mind that they will need triple that figure. No community can afford a true competitive 50-meter pool. Just ask the city of Long Beach. For the Olympic trials they built two temporary pools and once trials were over they sold them. Why? Too expensive to maintain.

Bottom line: If you are committed to build an aquatic facility, you need to realize 50-meter pools are expensive and cannot be used for the recreational swimmer as they are too large and deep to accommodate families. The general public will need splash pads, water slides, a lazy river, a zero-depth entry feature, children play structures and deck space for tables, chairs, umbrellas and concessions.

— Sam Goepp, Durham

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