When Memorial Day arrives late next month, it will begin the 15th summer in Butler without a municipal swimming pool.

The city shut down its Memorial Park Pool for good in the fall of 2004, two years after handing off its management to the YMCA, hoping the nonprofit could maintain it when the cash-strapped city no longer was able. The Y accepted this duty fully aware that the expense would run about twice as much as the most optimistic income projection of about $30,000 a year, more interested in providing the service than in making money.

“It’s not a revenue-producing facility for the Y or for the city,” said YMCA Executive Director Larry Garvin in the May 3, 2003, Butler Eagle. “We just want to ensure the services get offered to the community.”

Keeping the pool open was one thing; maintaining it was another. A 2006 study determined it would cost $250,000 to repair the pool’s leaks and broken filtration system and to correct the pool’s depth, since it was too shallow by state safety regulation. The expense prompted a group to consider converting the pool into a more economical spray park. The plan never materialized.

Fifteen years later, it seems necessary to revisit the pool debate, primarily for two reasons:

n Those old enough to remember are likely hazy about the details of its closing.

n Those too young have no idea how much the pool meant to many of their elders.

By the same token, no Butler child under age 20 remembers the city pool. Their only local pool is the county-owned Alameda Park Pool. Do they really care who owns it?

At this past week’s meeting of Butler City Council, it was announced that Butler children participating in the city’s summer recreation and lunch program run by the Grace Youth and Family Foundation will be covered for admission for scheduled trips to Alameda Park Pool.

The summer recreation program takes place in Father Marinaro, Institute Hill and Rotary parks. The city is covering the cost of transportation and admission to the pool in Alameda Park.

This is a very good remedy to a 15-year-old problem. The children don’t care who technically owns the pool, whether it was paid for with county tax dollars or local tax dollars. All they want is a clean, attractive, safe place to hang out and cool off with their friends in the summer heat.

Come to think on it, this solution doesn’t break the city treasury to retrofit a 15-year-closed swimming pool when a perfectly fine one already exists a little over a mile away.

Maybe some commercial sponsors or organizations could figure out ways to expand the summer program to include more kids or more activities — or more trips to the pool for them.

Fifteen years ago, this newspaper criticized the city council for fiscal mismanagement that led to the closing of the Memorial Park pool. “The community’s young people and families who use the pool shouldn’t have to pay the price for bad management by elected officials over many years,” stated the Dec. 9, 2004 editorial.

It’s a different landscape today. We have availability to a superior pool, transportation and the means to coordinate these resources efficiently. It makes far more sense to take advantage of the existing conditions than to start spending tax dollars to carve out a new program or venue.

The kids just want to swim.