Opening Day at the Pool!
By Jeff Moffitt
@moffittjc (128837)
Gainesville, Florida
April 29, 2016 7:06pm CST
Today was opening day for my city's busiest municipal swimming pool! As the Aquatics Director, my staff and I have been extremely busy this past week getting everything ready to go, and each day leading up to today became more and more stressful as we scurried around trying to make everything perfect for the grand opening. The pool opened up at 3:00pm this afternoon, and it took staff right up until opening time to make sure everything was just right! But somehow we pulled it off, and as we had hoped, we had a large and happy opening day crowd!
Today is the unofficial start of my busy "summer" season! And even though it's only April, with a high of 92 today it felt like summer was already upon us!
Are you familiar with the municipal swimming pools in your community? Do you ever visit them? Have they opened for the season yet?
6 people like this
4 responses
@ElusiveButterfly (45941)
• United States
30 Apr 16
We only have an indoor pool now. Years ago we had a municipal pool and it was always packed during the summer months. I remember my mother dropping me and my 3 brothers off at the pool in the morning and picking us up in the late afternoon. She packed us sandwiches and drinks to share too. It was a safe and fun place.
Later on the pool was hard to keep clean. I recall the town worker dumping barrels of chlorine into the pool every week upon closing time. I guess it didn't keep the germs down and eventually it closed for good. They drained the water and filled it in.
Now there is an indoor tennis place where the pool once was. The pool is gone, but the memories I have will never go away.
1 person likes this
@moffittjc (128837)
• Gainesville, Florida
30 Apr 16
We had a pool that was so old the Health Department ended up closing it down because it couldn't meet the current code requirements. Instead of renovating it and bringing it up to standards, the city just filled it in and abandoned it. The land sat vacant for decades, but over the last two years a housing development sprung up where the pool used to be.
I know what its like to have crowded pools! The pool we opened today will get about 55,000 patron visits over the six months it is open. That's a lot of people!
1 person likes this
@ElusiveButterfly (45941)
• United States
30 Apr 16
@moffittjc yes it is! I remember our pool being so crowded on a hot day. The lifeguards had their work cut out for them.
1 person likes this
@moffittjc (128837)
• Gainesville, Florida
30 Apr 16
@ElusiveButterfly Our biggest swimming pool can hold 440 people at a time, and during the summer we are at capacity pretty much all day long. I've had days where over the course of the entire day--from opening to closing--we've had over a thousand people visit the pool. And that's just one pool!
1 person likes this
@moffittjc (128837)
• Gainesville, Florida
30 Apr 16
You described it perfectly Judy! Fortunately, the patrons who visit the pool only see the calm "duck" on the surface, and most of the time they never see the "paddling like hell" that is going on beneath the surface!
1 person likes this
@JudyEv (382240)
• Rockingham, Australia
1 May 16
@moffittjc And then people say 'it all went off really smoothly'. Little do they know!
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@moffittjc (128837)
• Gainesville, Florida
1 May 16
@JudyEv That's what I am always saying to my staff...people never need to see us acting frantic behind the scenes! As long as it appears everything is running smoothly from their perspective, they don't ever have to know how much is going wrong behind the scenes! Knowing that perspective helps keep my staff from becoming too overwhelmed when things aren't running just perfectly!
1 person likes this
@LadyDuck (502573)
• Italy
30 Apr 16
@moffittjc You have a much warmer weather in your country, an open pool would be used only a couple of month a year where I live.
1 person likes this
@moffittjc (128837)
• Gainesville, Florida
30 Apr 16
@LadyDuck Surprisingly, here in north Florida the water stays pretty cold for a long time. Although the sun has been shining and the days warm since March, the water in the pools have still been below 68-70 degrees. We have a policy that we won't open a pool until the water is warmer than 72 degrees (the same temperature as the water in our local springs).
1 person likes this
@moffittjc (128837)
• Gainesville, Florida
30 Apr 16
One of our pools is open year round. The others are all seasonal.
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@IvySaysHi (4603)
• United States
30 Apr 16
we go to an indoor aquatic center and it s openyear round i believe
1 person likes this
@moffittjc (128837)
• Gainesville, Florida
30 Apr 16
I have a year-round pool that I operate as well. In fact, that pool was closed for three months for renovations, and just opened back up a couple of weeks ago!
1 person likes this
