Last night the Park Ridge Recreation & Park District Board voted 6-1 finally to put Oakton Pool out of its misery rather than spend almost $100,000 on repairs just so it could re-open for the season…and, presumably, generate another whopping operating loss, as has been its custom the past several years.

Only Commissioner Mary Wynn Ryan voted to drag this battered shell of a facility through one more summer, voicing all the warm & fuzzy reasons that have kept it limping along under a “do not resuscitate” order while Commissioners Marty Maloney, Jim O’Brien and Rick Biagi spent the last couple/few years trying to recruit a fourth vote to put this old horse down and stop burning money that could be much better used elsewhere.

What did it take to get the Park Board to this point? Try a notification from the Cook County Department of Public Health that Oakton would not be licensed to open without some major repairs estimated at $94,000 – quite a jump up from Oakton’s customary pool-opening costs of around $12,000. And spending that money would not have guaranteed that Oakton Pool would make it through the summer.

Interestingly enough, the Park District budgeted for a $72,419 loss from all of the District’s outdoor pools in 2011, with Oakton’s stand-alone loss budgeted at $94,472. If we understand these numbers, and if they are accurate, Oakton’s closure might enable the District to actually turn a modest profit on those pools this year, something it hasn’t come close to doing in years/decades(?).

Like it or not, the era of outdoor swimming facilities like Oakton has come and gone – and it’s not likely to return anytime soon, especially in climates like ours where outdoor swimming is confined to three months a year. A well-run private company would have cut Oakton’s losses years ago, but governmental bodies tend not to care about making a profit and maximizing the value of their assets, a combination that generally is deadly in private business but is S.O.P. in the public sector where taxpayers are so easy to fleece.

Our October 16, 2007 post, “The Old Oakton Bucket,” criticized the waste of money on a deteriorating Oakton Pool that provided mere lap swimming to a generation demanding ever-changing “water entertainment.” We questioned how long the Park District could justify keeping Oakton’s doors open when it was averaging around $85,000 a year in operating losses – more than the District’s other three outdoor pools combined – on increasingly sparse attendance.

We just found out.

This momentous decision serves as a fitting valedictory for Commissioner Marty Maloney, who is ending eight years on the Park Board and heading over to Park Ridge City Hall as the new 7th Ward alderman. Unlike the current-but-departing occupants of Maloney’s new venue who lacked the integrity and the guts to vote on each of Mayor Dave Schmidt’s 70 line-item vetoes individually on its own unique merits this past Monday night, Maloney and fellow departing Park Commissioner David Herman didn’t punt the Oakton decision to the incoming board.

That’s a difference that shouldn’t be lost on those of us who pay the bills for local government.

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