You are now going to meet a lovely, vivacious activist lady like few others on earth. She ran for Congress in 2010 as Republican for the fourth South Carolina district. This just in -- on subjects we've been chewing over on this page, you and I:
August 5, 2013
Re: Time Sensitive Information – Spartanburg plans to sign the contract as early as this Wednesday to have the Swim Center demolished.
Dear Board Members of District 7 School System:
Thank you for serving our community as a Board Member of District 7 in the lovely city where I live and have made my home these last 14 years. In my experience, and it’s actually considerable as I have had occasion to visit many Spartanburg county schools, this district has the most dynamic, creative, and interesting teachers and administrators – also the most welcoming. Not every city is a place where families want to locate – in fact, Spartanburg is a declining jewel – it’s population is not growing. More and more we hear that the city needs to attract more of the “creative class” or, in other words, more single adults and childless couples.
This month’s Manhattan Journal contains an article about this trend; it calls it “the childless city”: http://www.city-journal.org/2013/23_3_childless-cities.html. Yes, school taxes are expensive, but children are our future and cities with children help to keep us focused on that future. Adam Smith is known for economics, but he was also a moral philosopher. He advocated keeping children at home and not sending them to boarding schools because children in the home (and the neighborhood) help adults to behave better! Childless cities are probably the last thing we ought to be advocating, because Spartanburg is the perfect size to be something a large city cannot be, that is, a real community. Children are the number one asset when it comes to creating real communities. They have certainly contributed to the ambiance here in Converse Heights!
Another reason to choose city living is the associational, cultural and recreational opportunities that are available to all, regardless of income. As we were considering a job offer for my husband from a local college, the Dean mentioned that there was a nice and affordable place to swim. We are both swimmers, the college did not have a pool and the costs of moving to Spartanburg were high, trading two tenured jobs for one untenured. The Swim Center helped weigh the odds in favor of moving. We swam happily at the Swim Center for years and now swim at the YMCA, where I am on the Master’s swim team. The Y is very nice, but much more expensive.
In planning for a child-friendly city, one must keep an eye on costs. Tearing down and burying the Roger-Milliken inspired 50 meter pool at the YMCA was not financially prudent and not in the interest of low-cost recreation. At least since the 90’s our men’s and women’s “Y” teams have been champions and excellent facilities helped make that happen. The fact that the Y is private does not obscure the damage to the community when a major asset like the old pool is lost.
Businesses seeking to relocate consider future taxes and present amenities. They look at schools. We have better schools than Greenville, but in many other areas they are ahead of us. What sort of government do we have? The County and the City appears to be following the Detroit model and not the Greenville model. But I do not want to set the District against the city or the county. There is too much North Side v. South Side, County vs. City kinds of things already in the air. I am particularly struck by City Administrator Ed Memmott’s insistence that the Swim Center has to close in order for the City to support development on the North Side and that Swim Center costs threaten vital city functions. Tearing down the Swim Center is too like Detroit’s recent effort to save money by bulldozing housing in the city. Are we really so bad off that we need to bulldoze the Swim Center? (http://www.goupstate.com/article/20120316/ARTICLES/203161012
The Swim Center is a solid, concrete building, and with maintenance, can continue to serve the community for many years to come. In fact, the latest lease (attached) has provisions for automatic renewals until August 2039. And now it needs to be blown up and buried? You might enjoy watching this video about a swim center that was built in 1922 and used for 56 years in Bloomington, Indiana.http://iusbcrhc.wix.com/homepage#! The story of “the Nat” is quite interesting, especially the role “the Nat” played in the civil rights history of Bloomington, which, like Spartanburg, is a college town. I have been told that the Swim Center must be destroyed in the interests of civil rights. Apparently some of our civic leaders are worried that there will someday be a new pool on the North side and whites will choose to swim there while blacks will choose to swim at the Swim Center. Is this not a strange sort of paternalistic political correctness? How do they know who is going to swim where, if the pools are public? And what does it really matter as long as people are free to choose? And must our children do without swimming lessons and opportunities to enjoy a pool while we wait for a glorious new pool on the other side of town?
I realize that you know all about the Swim Center, but the figures in the “go upstate” article above are surprisingly large and so far as I know, unverified by any outside, objective source. I spoke with my neighbor John Perry about this problem. As Vice-president for Government Relations at USC-UPSTATE, he has access to the annual maintenance costs of their indoor, 8 lane pool. It costs USCUPSTATE $30,000, but this does not include staff.
Most of the Swim Center’s budget is for staff. A great deal can be done to improve revenue and decrease the cost of staff. There are rarely huge crowds at the Swim Center, but 5 lifeguards on deck is not rare.
Drawing on my experience as Assistant Aquatics Director at The University of Alabama, and the figures I’ve seen from the City, I feel confident that the cost of running the pool could easily be reduced by 33% without increasing the present staffing. As mentioned, the staffing is excessive and cutting back here would help costs. On the revenue side, there is inadequate oversight of sign-ins. This process should be computerized and every patron tracked. Swimming for free is common under the present regime.
My plea to the District is this: please take back the pool, make it open to the public on a more limited basis until costs stabilize and begin teaching all the second graders to swim like they do at the Drew Wellness Center in Columbia. The benefits for students and their families, if the Spartanburg Swim Center is run properly, are endless! For example, we could:
- Establish Middle School Swim Teams;
- Organize supervised swimming classes for Elementary School Students;
- Provide American Red Cross certified Lifesaving and Water Safety classes for students and staff;
- Offer swimming courses specifically for the parents of our children;
- Host revenue generating events – swim meets can make up to $17,000;
- Take the lead in developing the proposed Spartanburg Aquatics program.
And more -
The request is simple “keep this valuable asset in use”. The City has abandoned the pool twice in 33 years!
With a revised management plan, and a second evaluation of the facilities, there may be a reversal of the current decision.
The politicians want a new pool that they can take credit for, preferably in their own districts and believe that once the Swim Center is razed to the ground, they can "save" the money spent toward a pool to be built in five years in a more "desirable" location and they hope, like the Swim Center, with Federal Funds (per a city councilman speaking at the NAACP meeting on the question of closing the pool.) The impact on thousands of children cannot be measured, nor older citizens, nor poorer citizens.
If you could put someone in charge of the Swim Center who was not worried about whether participants were coming from the city or the county, but instead were looked at as participants who are helping to pay the bills, then the Swim Center could be a hub for the county and not a financial drain.
Too often, important decisions like this are made, in every community, without community consciousness. The Upstate’s history is not user friendly when measured by a rubric of what may is best for all the children. Instead, we more often get top-down decisions that are best for those charged with making the decisions. The city says people are not interested in keeping the Swim Center because they have not brought “resources” to the table. But the people vote with their feet and those feet brought them to this city. One of the reasons for locating here is the Swim Center. 4,000 of them signed petitions to keep the Swim Center open. These people pay taxes for that purpose. Currently the city is conducting referenda throughout our communities to determine if we want speed bumps. They could have held a referendum on the Swim Center. They did not because they know it would lose.
One thing is certain, the Upstate is home to smart, proud African-Americans, European Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, Asian Americans et. al,. Swimming is something that brings us all together.
Thank you for your leadership - so glad you are doing what you are doing and may God bless you mightily for your contributions to our children.
Sincerely,
Christina Jeffrey, Ph.D.801 Palmetto St.
Spartanburg, SC 29302
H/O: (864) 948-1297
Cell: (864) 431-6022
What sets her apart is not only her feminine gusto but her political acuity. You hear of many people as they've come on the scene that they're harrrrd right, meaning, you hope, finally going to show some grit against even Republican folderol. Too often they're paper tigers merely posing as very politically incorrect while inwardly angling for some position in the socialist Republican establishment. Not Christina -- this gal is even racially incorrect, and that's the last taboo before liberals throw you in the trash altogether! Search candidate christina jeffrey for wild stuff like....
http://www.fitsnews.com/2010/03/15/christina-jeffrey-controversial-comments-resurface/
Bigotry is not the problem. The communist duplicity of "anti-racist" demagoguery is -- and that, not minority members, are what people like Christina and I are trying to bust up.
I keep trying to sum up the diversity cult in passing at PN meetings. Unfortunately, the cult and its insane dogma from hell are expressly designed to blog quick summation -- if people finally see who's trying to destroy them, how far it's come, and the depraved anti-philosophy that drives it, it could be very bad for the leftist establishment's business.
I've tried to do it again here and failed. If you're already disgusted by what the self-appointed thought police in media, politics and religion are doing to inculcate and enforce diversity-mania, you probably already have the picture.
/\/.\/\/.
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