Urban and Regional Planning 305 University of Wisconsin-Madison
PUBLIC POOL ACTIVISTS MADISON, WISCONSIN	Dive in! Where? The Madison Pool Activists Urban and Regional Planning 305, Discussion 301 Madison is a world renowned city for it’s culture, it’s history, it’s schools. It has served as a home to the Iron Man Competition, the Madison Mallards, the University of Wisconsin, Nobel Peace Prize winners, countless events, and top-notch schools, it was even voted “Friendliest City in the Midwest” by Midwest Living. With all of the many wonderful things our city has to offer, wouldn’t you think a public swimming pool would be one of them? A public swimming pool would serve as an enormous benefit to our community. The benefits of swimming are astronomical. On a personal level it increases a quality of living by improving health, providing physical conditioning and stress relief. On a social level, there is the development of leadership skills and shared community involvement. It also provides economic benefit to the city as new jobs, such as maintenance, lifeguarding, swim instructors, management, and many more will be created and more people will be attracted into the city. Swimming is so important that the BBC states that swimming is “a vital skill that every child should be taught.” How can our children be taught this lifelong skill if there is no place to teach them? If Madison is “the friendliest city”, then it should be able to afford to provide this facility to the members of the community that cannot afford memberships private facilities. If Madison is the friendliest city then it should provide the members of it’s city a place to swim when the lakes are polluted and no one is left for a place to cool off after suffering the blistering heat of the day, since last year local scientists estimated that during the summer months there were only 10 days of clear water in the cities lakes. We already know that Madison will come up for the funding for such things as the Monona Terrace or the new Arts district, but isn’t a public pool, something that benefits every person in the Madison area across all class and racial boundaries, just as important? Milwaukee was able to come up with the funding for twelve separate swimming pools as well as several wading pools. What does Milwaukee have that we don’t have? They do not have large amounts of excess money at their disposal, but they do have a sense of pride in their community and value the importance of a place for everyone to come and reap the many health, personal, social, and economic benefits that a pool offer. Don’t we too as a community strive towards those very things? We are a city of over 200,000 people and do not have a public pool, even small towns such as Oregon, New London, and Wittenberg all have public pools. A public pool in Madison would benefit everyone here; it is a safe gathering place and will build community ties. We should be embarrassed as a city not to have a Municipal Pool System. Former Mayor Sue Bauman stated that she had a plan to build Madison’s first Municipal pool before she left office. She too believed that a pool was very important to this community but was not able to see the project to completion. Mayor Dave Cieslewicz has also realized how vital a public pool is and promises that construction will begin on one pool in 2006 and another in 2008 but while this looks good on paper we need to be active lobbyist as community citizens to see that this is accomplished. The city officials need to know of our concerns and our opinions for a public pool and about the great importance this pool would play in our city. It is crucial that we put pressure on our city officials to build a public pool for the benefit of our community because shouldn’t Madison truly be the best city in America”?
Dive into our website: Home Benefits Article to Capitol Times Article to Isthmus Links