Budget wrangling for the coming year is wrapping up, and users of Salt Spring’s second most popular public amenity will be happy to hear the Rainbow Recreation Centre’s pool will be returning to a seven-days-a-week schedule in 2025.
Among dozens of preliminary budget tweaks worked out over a marathon session for Salt Spring’s Local Community Commission (LCC) Thursday, Sept. 12 was a funding bump that will re-open the pool on Sundays — mostly likely with staffing in place to permit swimming from 1 to 5:30 p.m., according to acting Capital Regional District (CRD) senior manager Dan Ovington.
Calling the pool “a hole into which we pour money,” LCC member and CRD director Gary Holman agreed more islanders use the pool than any other amenity apart from the library — and voters approved both.
“There are still things we’re not able to do,” said Holman. “The service level at the pool is lower than it was a few years ago. But our single largest requisition cost is that one facility.”
Ovington said Sundays were historically popular days for swimming, often seeing more than 100 visitors even with shortened hours.
“We hear it a lot now, ‘why aren’t you open on Sundays?’” he said. “It also opens up opportunities for birthday parties, and really something else for families to do on weekends in the winter.”
In addition to the staffing increase, commissioners also approved a budget for a new safety improvement: surveillance cameras in public indoor areas at the recreation centre.
Ovington told LCC members there had been a number of recent safety incidents at the pool where some “younger, specifically female staff” felt unsafe — prompting a safety audit that brought forth several recommendations, including improvements in training and front desk arrangements and adding surveillance.
“This would be similar to what we have at other CRD and greater Victoria facilities,” said Ovington, pointing to Panorama, Oak Bay and Saanich pools. “Cameras in the common areas, as well as out on the pool deck — but not the change rooms.”
Ovington said there had also been multiple reports from parents — either to his office, he said, or often to police — of various kinds of inappropriate behaviour toward children, but it was often difficult to take action when one party denies doing anything wrong.
“As an example, on the low end of what we’ve been experiencing there, we hear ‘an elderly man was licking his lips at me, it was inappropriate,’” said Ovington. “We approached the gentleman, he said ‘I didn’t do that.’ And it’s their word against a seven-year-old.”
Ovington said staff in other CRD pools had found common-area cameras useful, and they were recommended by local RCMP — to help enforcement, he said, but also as a deterrent.
LCC member Brian Webster said that while he was generally skeptical of public surveillance for its privacy implications, he was more agreeable to cameras inside a public facility than outdoors, where unknowing passers-by “could have their privacy invaded.”
“I think this passes the test,” he said, “for something where the importance of ensuring the safety of staff outweighs my concerns around protection of privacy, particularly given that the only people affected would be people who chose to enter the facility.”
A one-time expense for that project will be met by Community Works Funds, according to a staff report.