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Published on 03/01/1999 All articles from this issue

Covington pool to close a year earlier than planned

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By Joanne Griffith Domingue / Town Crier Staff Writer

Dick Thomas just got some bad news, and he came to the Los Altos City Council for help.

Thomas, chairman of the SPLASH executive committee - Swimmers Promoting Los Altos Aquatics, Safety and Health - and a Master Swimmer himself, learned that the Los Altos School District will be shutting down the Covington Pool a year earlier than he had been previously told.

"We won't be able to build a new pool in this short a time frame," he told the Los Altos City Council members at their Feb. 16 meeting.

He asked the council for help to identify a site for a new pool; to encourage the school district to give them more time at the Covington pool; and to work together to "accelerate the building process" of a pool.

Thomas would most like a pool on the city-owned 401 Rosita property, and asked the council to give that a higher consideration.

The Los Altos Masters provide "the community all its aquatic programs," Thomas said, which include summer swim lessons for the city of Los Altos. They use the swimming pool that is in the center of the Covington School site, currently home of the school district offices and day care tenants. But the school district will be re-opening the school following major renovations.

Thomas, with reassurance from the district, had thought his group would have the use of the pool, which is wearing out anyway, until June 2001.

"It has never been our intention not to allow the community to use the current pool, which was built by community fund-raising, for the rest of its useful life, which has been estimated for approximately three years," said Marge Gratiot, superintendent of the school district, in a memo to the Town Crier in May 1998.

But the school's timeline has changed. The district wants to open Covington School for grades K-6 no later than fall of 2001, "which would necessitate the start of construction by June 2000," said Kristine Salmon, president of the school board of trustees, in a Feb. 4 letter to Thomas.

When asked about these changes in timeline, Gratiot said, "The school committee's No. 1 priority is to reopen Covington to get the sizes of our schools down. It doesn't seem fair to design a whole site use around pool use."

Gratiot did suggest that since Thomas' main concern is the summer swim program, "maybe the demolition of that part of the site could come at the end of the summer," which would allow swim lessons through the summer of 2000.