Butler City Councilman Charles Savannah's explanation of why the Memorial Park Pool should not be opened next year is unacceptable. 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.

Savannah told the Butler Eagle that with the city about to begin its fourth year in a financial crisis (not so now because of the $47 Emergency Service and Municipal Tax, which is estimated to bring in $303,000) and with the decline of pool goers, he "could not in good conscience ask Council to spend thousands of dollars on the pool in 2005."

What Savannah didn't acknowledge is that keeping the pool closed next year is an invitation to further deterioration and a decreasing likelihood that the pool would reopen in 2006, or ever. He also didn't acknowledge that many of the pool facilities' current problems and needs are the result of neglect over the years that allowed small problems to get big.

Meanwhile, Savannah is too quick to point to declining pool user numbers as a justification for closing the pool. He failed to acknowledge that the city has just experienced two consecutive rainy, cool summers. What happened weather-wise the past two summers doesn't guarantee that the same kind of weather will occur next June, July and August. In the summer of 2002, there was hot weather and little rain practically all summer.

City officials point out that several other pools in nearby counties have been closed permanently. However, there seems to be no initiative on the part of those same Butler officials toward trying to keep this city a cut above others in terms of recreational opportunities for its residents.

The bottom line in the pool issue is that if city leaders truly wanted to keep the pool in operation next summer and beyond, they could do it, and within the scope of financial feasibility. But as has happened too often in Butler's recent history, leaders have found it more convenient to exercise the do-nothing option, and that's what they are content to do now.

The do-nothing option is why the city's streets are in their current deteriorated condition.

City residents shouldn't believe the claims about having no money for the pool. The maintenance problems at the pool have been allowed to worsen in recent years, purportedly due to financial constraints, while city leaders "played dead" in terms of trying to save money in the last round of contract negotiations three years ago with the police, firefighters and other municipal workers.

Leaders found the money when they wanted to find it.

Now they are opting to cut costs at the expense of the city's children, giving young people more reason to complain that "there's nothing to do in Butler" and to congregate on Main Street with no real purpose, much to the dismay of those officials.

In the wake of the remnants of Hurricane Ivan, city residents are justified in asking whether the money the city is doling out to repair equipment that was damaged by flooding at the city garage - damage that occurred as a result of officials' failure to protect the equipment - could have paid for many of the repairs that the pool needs.

Savannah reminds city residents that the pool's filtration system needs to be replaced; a leak, whose source has yet to be found, must be repaired; and the bathhouse requires repairs and renovation. But city officials haven't been persistent in trying to find the leak, and they haven't taken the initiative to draw up plans or gather cost estimates for much of the other work necessary.

Therefore, at this late stage of 2005 budget preparation, it's hard to fathom how leaders ever intended, under next year's spending plan, to give the pool any chance of being open. Determined legwork regarding the pool should have started and been completed months ago.

"I think what we have to do is figure out what we want to do with the pool," Savannah said. Not knowing at this point is indicative of government that is not fully in touch with its missions and responsibilities.

Savannah should keep in mind that nothing short of the pool's operation in 2005 is acceptable. As the city's parks and recreation director, the councilman should be lobbying on behalf of the pool, not helping to hasten its permanent demise.