by Mark McDermott
As the Manhattan Beach Unified School District explores the potential for a new school bond to address facilities’ needs, the MBUSD Board of Education last week raised the possibility of including the redesign of Begg Pool as part of it.
The nearly 70-year-old community pool, which is located adjacent to Polliwog Park on MBUSD land, is nearing the end of its useful life. The City of Manhattan Beach operates the pool as part of its shared use agreement with the district. Last year, the City Council commissioned a set of designs by architectural firm HMC, who presented those plans to council earlier this month and to the school board at its May 15 meeting. One option would renovate the existing structures and the 25-yard pool. Another which would scrape the entire site and create a new aquatics center with both a 25-yard pool and a 35-meter competition sized pool. The renovation is projected to cost $28 million, while the new aquatics center would cost $40 million.
The City would be hard-pressed to come up with that much money, particularly with competing capital improvement needs, such as a new $30 million downtown parking structure and a proposed outdoor dining program that could cost as much as $20 million.
The council raised the idea of a public bond, but thus far the only action it took was to commission a poll to see what appetite the community has for funding a pool and/or its other infrastructure needs.
“Do people want to bond themselves?” asked Councilperson Steve Napolitano. “Do people want a $40 million pool?”
MBUSD is already in the process of conducting a community poll to see if a $200 million bond measure would find support on the November ballot. After the two pool options were presented to the school board May 15, trustees discussed whether Begg Pool could be part of that bond measure.
Trustee Wysh Weinstein suggested that MBUSD and the City could explore working together towards building the pool.
“Is this something we could maybe partner with the City on?” she asked. “It feels like something that should at least be discussed.”
Weinstein said that in addition to meeting a district and community need, building a new pool might also be a compelling reason for people to support a new school bond.
“Having this vision, having things for people to really see – people like to see where their money is going, and they have a hard time when there’s not a very clear plan,” she said. “But having this to point to, if this comes to fruition, I do think that would be instrumental.”
Trustee Tina Shivpuri suggested that perhaps the school board and city council could have a joint meeting to discuss the future of Begg Pool and how it could be funded.
“I don’t know if it makes sense for all ten of us to actually sit down and discuss these moving parts, so we can be strategic,” she said. “Because when we are asking for money from our community, whether we are asking or the City is asking, we are still asking the community – in the case of a pool, for a multi-generational, multi-purpose [facility]. Our current Begg Pool serves our students and serves our community. There’s so much overlap.”
Superintendent John Bose suggested the simplest way to talk to the City was through staff.
“The most efficient avenue is through staff to staff discussions, which we engage in regularly with the City and the Beach Cities Health District,” he said. “I think each entity has different constituencies – BCHD’s is Hermosa, Redondo, and Manhattan Beach, the City of Manhattan Beach for all residents, and our constituency is focused on our students. There are a number of moving pieces. We are out first with a poll, and we’ll get those results June 5, and we’ll need to make some decisions pretty quickly with direction or not to go out on the November ballot.”
The district’s financial and election consults each advised the board, at its April 18 meeting, to explore taking advantage of the fact that bond measures passed two decades ago will be fully repaid by next year, meaning a new $200 million bond would not represent an increase in taxes for local property owners and would allow the district to tackle the $153 million in facility needs left unmet by 2016’s school bonds. A $200 million bond would keep the tax rate just below $88 per $100,000 in assessed value, which is what the previous bond’s debt service has been at for the past few years. General obligation bonds that were issued after bond measures were approved by voters in 1995 and 2000 come to maturity this year, next year, and in 2026. School bond elections can only take place during even numbered years, hence 2024 will be MBUSD’s only opportunity to seek voter approval at a time that a bond measure would not represent a tax increase.
The school board, cognizant that the community just passed a parcel tax in March, commissioned a community survey to see if support levels warranted going for a school bond.
Trustee Bruce Greenberg said that it would make sense to work closely with the City and to consider both the results of its polling as well as the district’s poll before making a decision on whether or not to go forward with a school bond, and what that bond could potentially include.
“There’s multiple things going on in the community, not just from the City, but for the school district,” he said. “So we need to see how that goes, because you could saturate a lot of things if there’s not dialogue.”
School board President Cathey Graves said that if polling does not show support for a bond measure than clearly the board would not seek a ballot measure in November, regardless of facilities needs. But she said it’s also important for the community to understand that Begg Pool is near the end of its useful life.
“If repairs aren’t made at some point, we probably are going to have to close down that pool,” she said. “And would the community be okay with that? It’s something we have to think about…..Additionally, we have a pool on our high school property that is utilized by our swim teams and water polo teams, and it’s also nearing the end of its useful life.”
The modernization of Begg Pool was on the needs list of the facilities master plan developed a decade ago prior to the district’s previous school bonds, Measure C and Measure EE. Those bond measures totaled $150 million and passed with 70 and 67 percent approval, respectively, but polling at the time suggested voters would not have approved the over $300 million in facilities’ needs identified by the master plan. Measure C focused on modernizing the district’s five elementary campuses and added a music facility to Manhattan Beach Middle School, while Measure EE rebuilt Mira Costa High School’s gymnasium and created a state-of-the-art athletic complex. But those efforts stopped short of rebuilding the district’s swimming pools.
Brad Glassick, the managing partner from HMC, the architectural firm commissioned to design the two options for the redesign of Begg Pool, noted that community outreach meetings took place both at the MBMS and MCHS. He said the second option, for a new aquatic center, was derived with help from district and city staff and was particularly intended to meet both student and community needs.
“We came up with a scheme that introduces a new 35-meter pool that can accommodate some of the needs we have for water polo and for more advanced swim,” Glassick said. “We actually did hold one meeting at Manhattan Beach Middle School; the principal hosted us to really understand what are your site needs, being such a close partner, along with Mira Costa High School? What could an aquatic center in this part of the city be? We also have a second pool that would again be that small teaching pool for letting people learn how to swim.”
The school district will need to decide in the next two months, prior to a ballot deadline in August, whether to go out for a school bond in November.
Mayor Pro Tem Amy Howorth, in an interview, said that she is hoping that the council and school board can conduct a joint meeting after both the City’s and the District’s polls are completed to discuss ways they may be able to work together. Howorth, a former school board trustee who campaigned for election to the council last year on a platform that included a new Begg Pool as a community priority, said that prior to April it wasn’t on the City’s radar that a new school bond was a possibility this year.
“It would make a lot of sense for the Begg Pool project to be part of a school bond, since it is their property,” Howorth said. “I see a lot of support in the community for a new pool. I see it in parents, and I see it in older adults, so I think it would be a really important inclusion on any bond project list.”
The Council unanimously supported the district’s parcel tax this year, and Mayor Joe Franklin played a particularly active role in working for its passage. Howorth said she didn’t know the level of support the council would have for a school bond, but suggested that the inclusion of Begg Pool would certainly make it appealing.
“I can’t speak for the whole council,” Howorth said. “But that is a bond I could get behind.” ER
