Opinion: Freedom isn’t free, it costs a buck-o-five
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
Watts pool rebellion: trouble turns to terror.
The story of Sunday’s lifeguard-dunking mêlée at the 109th Street Swimming Pool is climbing the charts of the L.A. Times’ top stories, and I notice one detail:
Some of the adults were complaining about the $2.50 fee to enter.
Officially, it does indeed cost two bucks and four bits for an adult to enter the pool. But as I wrote last year in a story about my own misadventures at our city’s public pools, the problem is that most pool users do not have to pay an entry fee:
When I asked why the city doesn’t just charge a real but reasonable fee for entry, he said, “We’d love to do that,” but described a waterlogged tragedy of the commons: In 1999, then-Mayor Richard Riordan made all city pools free for minors. Last summer, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa extended that welcome to all adults with library cards. Effectively, the pools are free for everybody, and although that doesn’t seem to have brought out more swimmers (attendance has been dropping since 2002), it has produced an it’s-so-crowded-nobody-goes-there result. Think of it this way: The pools are now free for all residents, just like high school. And so you get something that looks and feels very much like high school: a prison-like environment for teenagers in which all property must be surrendered, all activity is strictly circumscribed and all adult supervision is provided by apparatchiks.
For the record, neither I nor the L.A. Times supports throwing city employees, or any other unwilling people, into swimming pools. But this is the result you can expect when you combine a high-security environment with no barrier to entry. (Go ahead and use the immigration analogy against me if you’re inclined.)
Predictably, activists and city officials are urging heavier security, zero tolerance, and so on. The one suggestion you don’t hear: Charge pool users a price reflective of the cost of maintaining and patrolling a public swimming pool, then let them enjoy the facility with something approaching dignity. This wouldn’t keep out all the riffraff. (An official I spoke with last year noted that the 109th Street pool has a problem with people jumping off a roof next door to get into the pool area.) But it’s more effective to filter out trouble at the front gate than try to suppress it on the inside.
It’s also a nonstarter. What politician wants to go down in history as the genocidal monster who took away free swimming pools in the middle of a heat wave?
Update: Actually, in addition to raising the adult entry fee from $1.50 to $2.50, the Citywide Aquatics Division has taken another step in the right direction: A library card only gets you 50 cents off now, not free admission. That seems to have been done in the name of budget necessity, not better resource allocation, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out.