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Cranston pool stuck in political mud – might not see opening in 2024
UPDATE: On May 2nd, the Cranston City Council approved the Mayor’s plan and a study will begin to get the reconstruction underway – after months’ delay, with any luck the pool will open in 2024.
In a press release sent by Cranston Mayor Kenneth J. Hopkins, the mayor is issuing a warning that if plans to reopen the Budlong Pool doesn’t get moving forward, it might not only miss the 2023 season – but the 2024 season as well. Sharing the entirety of Mayor Hopkins statement – followed by a response received last night by City Councilor Aniece Germain – and adding the YouTube video of the last council meeting on the pool leaves the future in doubt for – 2024 – if work cannot immediately commence.
In a clarifying statement to RINewsToday, Chief of Staff Anthony Moretti, on pool phases:
“Some people are referring to the renovation and construction of new smaller pool as phase one. That is the project scope that the mayor is proposing. In the event future expansion of the area into other recreational venues becomes viable the site can be expanded with future phases. No future phases are planned or being considered at this time. This scope of the project has been made clear to council members over the last couple of months, both through public and individual discussions.”
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Mayor Hopkins statement 4/17/2024:
Mayor Hopkins Warns City Council Holding Up Budlong Pool Renovations May Delay 2024 Opening
Hopkins has written to Council President Jessica Marino to express disappointment and frustration over the lack of Democratic support and timely review of his proposed plans and funding “for the next generation of the Budlong Pool as a revitalized community resource.”
Hopkins focused his concerns on Democratic Ward 2 Councilmember Aniece Germain and stated she “has clearly demonstrated that she prefers to be an impediment to my administration’s attempt to move forward to have a new pool opened by the summer of 2024.”
Mayor Hopkins said that the hiring of a qualified design professional to have the required architectural plans and construction drawings prepared for bidding purposes is critical.
“Without the plans we cannot seek bids from qualified contractors to offer their experience and services to the city,” he said.
To pay for the design consultant the mayor sponsored an ordinance (Ordinance No. 3-23-01) to the City Council to utilize up to $350,000 from available American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds for the engineering and design development for the Budlong Pool renovation.
“On April 3rd, the Finance Committee took no action on this request and continued it to their meeting on May 1, 2023,” Hopkins said. “The loss of a month is troubling in the critical path to have the pool ready in 2024.”
Mayor Hopkins explained he wants to hire Saccoccio & Associates, a local Cranston firm, to help with the plans for the new pool. He emphasized “they offer us a firm with a complete range of professional services including architectural design and consultation, and facilities planning.”
Hopkins said some council members questioned the selection process.
“Our law department has assured me that they are eligible to be selected from an established list through the Board of Contract and Purchase,” said Hopkins.
Mayor alarmed at grand-standing
The mayor continued, saying he was most alarmed at the political grand-standing at last week’s Public Works Committee meeting where “Councilmember Germain attempted to lead some type of inquisition under the posted meeting notice of a pool status update.”
The assistant city solicitor stopped the councilwoman from an apparent violation of the state’s open meeting laws. However, Mayor Hopkins stated, “she continued a bluster of misstatements for almost an hour as her council colleagues, with rare exception, allowed her to continue while holding off other important city matters on committee agendas.”
“It is apparent to everyone Councilmember Germain would rather have the political issue of the pool being closed rather than being part of the solution to get it re-opened,” said Mayor Hopkins, who has been clear in his plans for a new Budlong pool.
“I will not throw good money after bad with a band aid approach of pool patching and quick fixes for an antiquated World War II pool structure and pool house,” he said. “They are neither safe nor handicapped accessible.”
Hopkins stated some residents question the wisdom of spending substantial money to restore, staff, and operate a facility for a limited six-week period in our New England summer season.
“I have supported the direction of the Council and have included in my proposed capital budget $4 million to fund the pool modernization,” he said.
That funding awaits council approval with their current budget review. As has been announced, the mayor said, “my plan for the pool now includes a smaller rendition of a complex that I envisioned initially It will include a smaller pool structure and a new bath house. Later, if funding is available, a second phase could include more amenities like a splash pad and gathering spot for children and families.”
The mayor emphasized “if we cannot gather urgent momentum to fund the project design and get out to bid to hire a contractor to undertake and complete the work, summer of 2024 is slipping away for a pool re-opening.”
He concluded by stating, “We need council cooperation not continued status updates. We need affirmative action not negative barbs and politically motivated agendas.”
Special City Council Meeting held March 13th on an update of the Budlong Pool status:
The pool was discussed but put off to the May meeting, after discussion – review from beginning to approximately 29:00 to hear the dialogue at the last City Council meeting.
Response from Aniece Germain, Cranston City Council
“I want to say at the outset that this release [Mayor Hopkins] is so full of misinformation and distortions that it is not prudent for any media to print it as is, rather than reporting on it in a story that includes accurate facts and context, which I will provide below.”
The Mayor’s attempts to shift attention from his own dereliction of duty with dishonest and nasty personal attacks continues to astonish.
After much pressure from the then Democratic Council minority last year, in April, 2022, Mayor Hopkins finally delivered to the Council a report by the Federal Hill Group, an architectural firm selected by the Mayor, that laid out three options for the City to re-open the historic Budlong Pool. The pool, an indispensable recreational resource to Cranston residents—particularly the working families of Cranston who do not have the means to build their own pools or pay for other options for cooling off during the increasingly hot summer months– had already been closed for two years, and city residents had become increasingly frustrated and angry with the lack of action to re-open it.
The options laid out by FHG group ranged in cost from $2.5-2.8 million to $3.9-4.4 million. At the low end, the pool would be repaired and the bathhouse would be upgraded to make it ADA compliant, abate hazardous materials, and upgrade and increase the capacity of the bathhouse. For an additional $500-900,000, the existing pool would be replaced with a smaller pool with a significantly shallower depth, and other amenities would be added to the complex, including a splash pad, a playground, a fitness area, and room for a dog park. For an additional $1.1 to 1.5 million, in addition to the foregoing changes, the City would additionally demolish the existing bathhouse and replace it with a “recreational facility” (including a “pool house”). The entire FHG report was just 10 pages long and short on details, such as any description of the size, nature or range of uses of this recreational facility.
Last year, after considering the FHG, the City Council passed a bipartisan resolution supporting Option 1. After waiting in vain for the Administration to follow through with any plan month after month, I informed the Administration that I would place a pool update on the agenda for every Council meeting thereafter, to light a fire under the Mayor to do something so that Cranston residents would be spared another hot summer without a City pool.
Despite this, the Mayor did absolutely nothing to address the situation for 10 more months, until February, 2023, when he sent his representative to the City Council meeting to inform us that he had decided to go with a $7 million dollar plan, which was not even presented in writing, and was apparently different than any option FHG had presented—as well as nearly twice the cost. I asked the Mayor’s representative exactly how the Mayor intended to pay for this new plan, given that last year the Mayor adopted a budget that used half of the City’s ARPA funds to plug an operating deficit and saddled the City with a $12 million dollar structural deficit going forward. The Mayor’s representative had no answer.
At the March 16 Public Works Committee meeting, the Mayor sent a different representative, who informed us that the Mayor had decided to accede to the “will of the Council” and would instead go with the “original plan” for the smaller project of repairing the pool and bathhouse—but was now citing a price tag of $3.7 million. Once again, the Mayor’s plans were related to us verbally and we received no detail in writing.
Then, on the day of the City Council meeting, without any further communication with the Council, Mayor Hopkins held a press conference to announce—contrary to what had been represented to us at the Public Works Committee meeting earlier in the month, that he was proceeding with his $7 million plan. In short, it appears that the Mayor simply decided that he was going to implement his $7 million dollar plan, in stages, and was asking the Council to approve an expenditure of up to $350,000 to produce the engineering and architectural plans for this project, when the Council has never received a detailed written description of exactly the plan would entail, why its cost had almost doubled and how it would be paid for.
In addition, over the preceding months, it had been reported by the Herald that the City had replaced the Budlong pool liner in 2017, just three years before the pool was shut down and I had more recently learned that the new liner had been warrantied for 20 years. This led me to question whether FHG—which had not drained the pool and therefore could not have examined the liner—had a complete awareness of the pool’s condition when its report was produced. It further suggested that the liner’s manufacturer may well be liable for the cost of its repair or replacement.
For this reason, I decided to invite the City’s former longtime Parks and Recreation Director, Tony Liberatore, who retired in 2021, and is as knowledgeable as anyone about the condition of the pool, to answer some questions about the liner. I also asked the Administration to request the attendance of a FHG representative, so that we could clear up this and numerous other questions, both about its Option 2 and 3 and about the Mayor’s $7 million plan. We have numerous other questions, including some I have mentioned and others—such as whether, as has been hinted at by the Administration, the Mayor’s plan will involve a significant loss of the current on-site parking and how that will be addressed.
The Administration refused to invite FHG to answer the Council’s questions but Mr Liberatore did accept my invitation. However, as Mr. Liberatore began responding to my first questions, the Solicitor for the City (not the Council) intervened and insisted that claiming that it would violate public meeting laws to allow Mr. Liberatore to share his knowledge regarding the pool with the Council, because the public meeting notice described the agenda item as an “update” and I was attempting to hold a “hearing.” I do not believe for a minute that it would have violated public meeting law for Mr. Liberatore to share his knowledge, which might have been quite helpful. In fact, I believe that the Solicitor stopped Mr. Liberatore from speaking because informing the Council and the public on these matters might interfere with the Mayor’s desire to ram his plan through without the Council’s vetting. Nonetheless, in deference to the Solicitor, I simply asked that Mr Liberatore and the FHG attend a future meeting, with the necessary verbiage in the public meeting notice.
The notion that I or any of my Democratic colleagues were or have at any point been obstructionist is completely absurd and is clearly just an attempt by Mayor Hopkins to misdirect attention—and blame—from his own inexplicable failure to act expeditiously to make and execute a plan to reopen the pool and from his utterly chaotic approach to evaluating the problem, identifying a solution, and communicating with the Council—which has a right and responsibility to ensure that the plan that moves forward both addresses the priorities of our constituents and is fiscally responsible.
City of Cranston
https://www.cranstonri.gov/mayor-hopkins-announces-future-plans-for-budlong-pool/
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Feasibility Study for the Budlong Pool – click on link below image to read in full:
https://rinewstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/BFR-042222-1.pdf
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RINewsToday article on March 27th at press conference announcing plans to open Budlong Pool:
Ms. Germain is correct. The neighbors in the area brought up this subject 2 or 3 years ago. One neighbor told her about the liner & Ms. Germain looked into it. The City has 3 designs from FHG in hand that have been paid for. Why do we need more designs? Also, the Mayor has taken it upon himself to pick the design. The Mayor is making this political. We asked Ms. Germain to investigate why it hasn’t been opened. My understanding is that the pool house can be renovated but not replaced. It’s considered ”historic”. It doesn’t need to be larger since it’s not used for meetings, etc. People leave their belongings, take a shower, and head for the outdoors. We don’t have a Council problem – we have a Mayor problem. His word is the law. Splash pads are NO – stay home and take a shower. They don’t teach kids to swim. It’s the only place in the city where everyone of any age can gather, socialize, and exercise. It’s generations coming together as one.
As to calling on Parks to explain, using the Open Meetings law to avoid an explanation, is bogus. The meetings are open. Anyone can attend in person or via Zoom. They’re on YouTube. No one knows the condition better than the Director of Parks. I don’t see a violation. No decision can be made, nor should it, without input from residents, especially those who border the area. We elect a council to represent us. Ms. Germain is doing what we have asked – looking into why our pool hasn’t been opened. We continue to ask and Ms. Germain keeps asking on our behalf which is why she continues to put it on the docket.
This is nothing but shooting the messenger.
This is a totally political issue and should never be. I’m disgusted by the squabbling between the two parties.
This became political since the Mayor decided to make it political. It was never political. People from Ward 2 (where the pool is located) and some from Edgewood asked Ms. Germain what the story was. One neighbor told her the liner was recently installed & asked her to look into a warranty. She has obviously done that. The pool is still filled with yrs. of rainwater & debris. I’ve asked the Mayor a few times to have it drained. It’s still not done. Some water has to remain at the deep end which Mr. Liberatore could have explained as to why.
Ms. Germain is an elected official. Her job is to listen to her constituents. We’re the ones who brought this to her attention and we come from both parties and none. I’ll reiterate – the Mayor has made this political, no one else. Ms. Germain is seeking answers to the questions that we have asked. I’ve tangled with the Mayor on NextDoor who repeatedly told me to ‘come to his office’ and he’ll show me plans. I don’t answer to the Mayor – he answers to the residents of Cranston. He wouldn’t have his job without the citizens of the City. His job is to manage, not dictate. We have a pool and that pool should be opened. End of story. FHG can’t assess a thing until it’s drained. Drain the damned pool and let’s see what’s what!! Start from the beginning instead of leaping to the end. Ms. Germain is taking a step-by-step approach yet is being called out for using common sense. By attacking our rep., the Mayor has turned me off. She’s listening and asking OUR questions but she’s getting the heat.
A 1/3 pool size isn’t acceptable. What is going to be the depth? Is it going to be suitable for those who are experienced swimmers? It’s not a ‘kid’ pool, it’s ‘everybody’s’ pool.
With the time wasted, almost an entire generation has lost access to chances that we older residents had. They can’t learn to swim, get much-needed exercise, meet friends they don’t get to see during the summer or make new acquaintances which builds their social skills.
While the Mayor has hammered Ms. Germain, Mayor Smiley of Providence has commended her for the work she’s done both inside and outside of Cranston. It’s called “caring about others”.
The water in the pool is seeping up from the ground. To reopen a pool once it has been closed, a whole new ADA compliance guide is in place. The pool must be made less deep and with a new sloped entrance – no slide – no diving board – and other ADA changes. That’s just to start. There is a lot of federal guidelines which are new in the last 10 years – it is why many communities cement in their pools and put splash pads up or pools that are not deep enough to learn how to swim, and therefore qualify under much less stringent wading pool guidelines.