Why Chilliwack pools take turns closing on the weekend

Public pools should have people in them.

That’s one of the things Chilliwack resident Amber Price thought when she walked past the park, packed full of families, on a cold Saturday evening in Chilliwack. But the pool at the Chilliwack Landing Leisure Centre next door was empty. It closed at 4pm.

“The waters were peaceful and calm and not a soul was to be seen,” she said. “And I thought ‘why is there not that same raucous fun that I'm watching 100 meters away inside of the pool where it's warm, where there's change rooms and nice showers when you're done?’”

Price snapped a photo of the empty pool through the window and posted it to Facebook, where other locals and parents shared their concern. Many agreed that the pool shouldn’t sit empty on a weekend evening.

But the centre has been closed more often than many residents expected over the last few months —including all day on Sundays.

Last autumn, the city hired the YMCA to operate both the Chilliwack Landing and Cheam Leisure Centres with the understanding the pools would be open a certain number of hours per day. Since then, though, the pools have been open for about half of the agreed-upon amount. Though that may change soon, some residents are concerned the pools—even if they open later—won’t stay that way.

Lifeguards wanted

When the YMCA won the contract to operate the Cheam Leisure Centre and the Chilliwack Landing Leisure Centre last August, it agreed to run both pools for at least 16 hours a day Monday to Saturday and 14 hours a day on Sundays and holidays. The only day either pool should be completely closed (besides major maintenance or staff training) is Christmas Day.

But that’s not currently the case. The Cheam Centre is closed Saturdays, and the Landing Centre is closed Sundays.

The Landing Centre’s pools are usually closed for a few hours in the middle of the day and open until 8 or 8:30pm. On Saturdays, the pool opens at 9am and closes at 4pm. The Cheam Centre’s pools see midday closures as well, and its aquatic facilities shut down at 1pm on Sundays.

Those hours left Chilliwack Landing’s aquatic centre open for only about half (55.5) of the 110 hours per week the city says it should be running. The Cheam Centre’s pool was open 62.5 hours per week.

The city knows that the operating hours of both centres are well below what was outlined when the YMCA won the contract, But it had expected a slow start for the organization based on staffing challenges. The schedules, a city spokesperson said, were based on the YMCA having “a full complement of lifeguarding and instructor staff.”

Having each pool open a different weekend day was an effort to keep at least one pool running each weekend day, city staff said, and was based on staff availability.

Over spring break, hours are increasing slightly at both pools, though neither will run 110 hours per week. It isn’t clear when to expect longer hours permanently at either pool. It also isn’t clear when the YMCA must meet its 110-hour requirement, or what will happen if it fails to do so.

The biggest limitation to keeping the pools open is staffing, Landing Leisure Centre manager Lauren Janzen said.

As more staff are hired and trained, Janzen said, operational hours and programs will increase.

“The YMCA is continuing to invest in the recruitment of lifeguards to address the staffing shortage that we and other operators are facing,” Janzen said.

Though the lifeguard shortage has affected operators across the province, pools in Chilliwack face problems that aquatic facilities elsewhere don’t.

Making (and keeping) lifeguards

Chilliwack resident Melissa Kendzierski knows that training more lifeguards is a necessary task to get pools open longer and later. Kendzierski is a recreation program co-ordinator at a nearby municipality and has managed aquatics in the past. But, she said, training and hiring lifeguards is only part of the solution. Chilliwack also needs to keep them.

“One of my concerns …is that [the lifeguards] can go to a neighboring municipality,” she said. Aquatic talent and leadership have been draining from Chilliwack for years. Kendzierski was part of that migration herself earlier in her career.

The city and YMCA are actively training lifeguards to fill the holes in the schedule, and lifeguards in Chilliwack received a $6 raise after concerned residents (including Price) pushed the issue last year. But they’re still paid less than their counterparts in neighbouring cities, where lifeguarding is a union job. While the wages ($22 an hour, $20 for junior guards) may now seem similar for lifeguards in Chilliwack compared to Mission, Abbotsford, or Hope, unions shift that equation, Kendzierski said.

“You're still competing with neighboring municipalities who have union positions that pay in lieu of benefits…[Lifeguards] are making more money elsewhere,” Kendzierski said. Pay can be the equivalent of $28 an hour, as opposed to $22.

Price, who’s Facebook post sparked online conversation about the shortened pool hours last month, noted that a union also makes the jobs better in the long-term—for instance, they ensure wages will rise with inflation. And long-term lifeguards benefit the communities they serve.

“When you take lifeguarding away as a job, it becomes a career,” she said. “When you have career lifeguards, the quality of the education offered in swim lessons and the quality of care that's given to your citizens and the pool is that much higher because you have masters in their field.”

The city and YMCA have added incentives to keep the city’s newest crop of lifeguards in the community while they work to fully staff both pools. A grant program can cover some of the course costs of lifeguard training for applicants who work in the city for a year.

While a short-term solution to retention concerns, Price said the grant wasn’t as powerful as it could have been. Candidates had to pay up-front costs and wait for reimbursements, she noted.

“When you're looking at youth who might be from families that don't have a higher income to be able to provide their kids with a job…they can't come up with that money.”

Looking at the long-term

Whether either pool meets the expected schedule by April isn’t Kendzierski’s main concern.

She’s more concerned that there won’t be enough oversight on YMCA operations from the city to prevent familiar lifeguard retention problems from bubbling to the surface once more. She’s worried that lifeguards will continue to vanish, leaving pools closed to those who want to use them.

“My concern is [that] the level of watchdogging that didn't happen… led to the dissemination of all of [Chilliwack’s] lifeguards. And that that could potentially happen again,” she said. “My concern is that that is not going to be there.”