The Stonewall Park Swim team, a 140-member summer time team, will now be paying $5 more per hour to use the Stonewall Park Pool facilities in Manassas.
Bryan Schultz, the team’s Board President for the last three years, stated that the team has been using the pool for around 25 years.
The increases in the team’s cost to use the pool began last year, Schultz stated.
“This has been in discussion since last year – we had an increase that occurred last year. And we began to negotiate with the city. In fairness, they hadn’t increased the rates in quite a few years,” said Schultz.
According to Schultz, the rate that the city wanted to increase the hourly use by was more than $5, but the team negotiated for a more reasonable rate.
“What we did, is we went into a negotiation with them, and we understood that this was going to have to happen, in order to keep the pool operating. And our use of the pool during off hours, and the costs associated with that would mean an increase in cost that we have had to absorb,” said Schultz, continuing, “Everything starts out – ‘this is what we need to increase your rates by’ and we had to say, ‘Wait a minute, we can’t afford this’.”
For the team to absorb the increased cost, they will need to do additional fundraising, or pull from their current budget. To generate revenue for the swim team, they have two main sources – the swimming registration fees and concession sales at swim meets.
While increasing registration fees is one of the few mechanisms the Stonewall Park Swim team has to handle the hourly increase, Schultz said it was essential not to raise the fees too high. Schultz stated this would block a lot of swimmers from being able to participate.
“I said, ‘You just can’t do it all at once’ – we’ve got to do this over a course of years. We would lose families if we raised our registration by 30%. We strive to get any kids, from whatever background into the pool, learning how to swim, because it’s such a fundamental.”
Schultz mentioned that particularly with the community’s demographics, including a large Hispanic population that the fees need to be an affordable rate.
The team’s normal season runs from mid-May to the end of July, and they utilize the pool for practices during the pool’s non-operating hours in the early mornings and evenings.
“We’re extending the pool use time, and we’re providing the city – income for them – and [the pool] is not just sitting idle with the team participation before and after public hours,” Schultz said.
