Will Public Pools Open in 2023?

The Milwaukee County Board recently adopted a budget for the government in 2023, which included enough funding to open five county-run public pools. But whether all those pools open is another question.

This past year, Milwaukee County Parks was only able to open three of the county’s 11 outdoor deep-well pools because of a lifeguard shortage. The department also opened Schulz Aquatic Park and a number of splash pads, though the county has struggled in previous years to staff all 11 of the county’s pools.

Opening the pools has been a priority for supervisors who hear complaints from constituents forced to look at shuttered pools in the dog days of summer. The 2023 budget adopted by supervisors included funding for five aquatic facilities to open, and an amendment sponsored by Chairwoman Marcelia Nicholson and Sup. Liz Sumner set aside $1.3 million that could be used to, among other things, open additional aquatic facilities next year. The entire aquatics system could be operated for less than $2 million, most of which goes toward labor, per 2021 estimates.

But a similar amendment was passed in the 2022 budget, setting aside a pool of funding to open aquatic facilities. The problem continues to be the lifeguard shortage, which doesn’t only affect Milwaukee. Nationally, there is struggle to find enough lifeguards that can’t be easily attributed to any single cause. But the shortage has also increased competition locally. A parks official said in 2022 they weren’t allowed to enter Milwaukee Public Schools to recruit.

In Milwaukee, the COVID-19 pandemic was certainly a factor that exacerbated the lifeguard shortage.

In 2020, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the county opted not to open or staff with lifeguards the county’s public pools and beaches in order to prevent transmission of the disease. Beaches were technically closed, as they went unguarded, but were still heavily used throughout the summer. County leaders made this decision in an attempt to protect public health. At the time, County Executive David Crowley said, “Every decision we’re making right now is focused on the safety of our park visitors and our staff.”

The pool and beach closures temporarily disrupted the annual return of these seasonal workers that also have to maintain a certification with training. The result was that in May 2021, just a little over a month before the county was scheduled to begin opening public pools and beaches, the department reported that it had recruited just over 50 guards, down from more than 130 in 2019. In order to run all the aquatic facilities in the system, the department would need more than 200 lifeguards.

Sup. Sheldon Wasserman, a former lifeguard, said the shutdown in 2020 “disrupted this whole natural tradition of guards moving up.” Wasserman predicted it would be difficult to restart this tradition, which has proven true. In 2021, only four head guards returned and none had experience guarding on Lake Michigan.

In 2021, the board approved a pay raise for lifeguards beginning at $15 an hour, and a series of bonuses that could net a returning guard up to $800. In 2022, the starting pay for guards was just above $16 an hour and topped out at $22 an hour. The board also provided parks with funding for a campaign to market the jobs and hold additional training sessions.

When the parks department appeared before the county board’s Finance Committee in October for the budget process, the first thing supervisors asked about was pool openings for 2023.

Guy Smith, executive director of the parks department, told supervisors that the department was already working on a lifeguard recruitment strategy for 2023 and that it would begin before the end of this year. Some of the funding the board provided could be used to create physical assets, like billboards or signs, to advertise that parks will be repurposed this year.

The department kept the indoor pools at Pulaski and Noyes parks open year round in 2022, which allowed the department to keep lifeguards on staff throughout the year. “We had a very dedicated lifeguard corps that I was very proud of this year,” Smith said.

In the future, the department would like to create an “ambassador corps” of lifeguards that would help recruit additional guards, he said, adding that a new deputy aquatics director to focus on recruitment is also something the department would like to create.