Way back in October 2007 we wrote our first post – “The Old Oakton Bucket (10/16/07) – criticizing the waste of hundreds of thousands of tax dollars by the Park Ridge Recreation & Park District in keeping the grossly under-used and over-expensive Oakton Pool operating.

As we wrote back then, the Park District has “failed to display the brains necessary to come up with any ideas for increasing attendance and operating that pool more profitably…or the guts needed to make the sound business decision to close the pool and find another use for that site.”  That missing combination generally is deadly in private business, but it seems to be standard operating procedure with local government.

Unfortunately for the taxpayers who have been watching the District pour their hard-earned money down that same hole in the ground for years, nothing seems to have changed since we wrote that post: As the Herald-Advocate reports: “Oakton Pool will live on for another summer” (“Oakton Pool gets one-year reprieve,” May 4).

After sounding like he was going to take the bull by the horns and deal with a facility that annually hemorrhages red ink, new Park District Director Ray Ochromowicz seems to have fallen under the spell that mesmerizes Park Board members and staff alike into letting Oakton manage the District instead of vice-versa. 

Back in March and April, Ochromowicz was talking positively about how “[t]here is enough water in Park Ridge to make up for the loss [of Oakton Pool].  But as the H-A reports, Ochromowicz’s initial “bang” has turned into a whimper.

“There has not been any discussion about altering that course of action for 2010,” he is quoted as saying – “that course of action” being keeping Oakton alive and losing approx. $100,000 a year.  Why not, Ray?  Isn’t promoting these kinds of discussions and making these kinds of decisions what your job is all about, especially in tough economic times?  Or are you so captivated by the enrollments in the District’s tax-subsidized summer baby-sitting service (a/k/a, its “summer camps”) that the $100,000 loss is acceptable collateral damage?

Ochromowicz also offered lukewarm pablum about wanting the Park Board to make a firm decision this Fall about whether Oakton should operate in 2011.  That sounds suspiciously like the “firm decision” the Park Board made in December 2006 before rescinding it when overcome by the warm-and-fuzzies of an approaching new swimming season, as the H-A article points out.

Oakton Pool has been an under-performing and expensive asset for far too long.  And it clearly does not have anything close to the customer base necessary to justify its continued operation: last Summer its attendance was only 17% higher than the South Park “baby” pool’s, despite Oakton’s capacity being almost 700% larger.  

And if a lack of customers isn’t bad enough for the “as is” Oakton, the voters said “no” to a new $13 million Oakton aquatic center by a 70%-30% margin in an April 2005 referendum, and they said “no” to a new $9.98 million aquatic center by a 57%-43% margin in a November 2006 referendum.  We doubt even a less-expensive plan for replacing Oakton pool would do that “well” today.  So why not stop the bleeding sooner rather than later – keeping Oakton open already has cost the taxpayers net losses of almost $500,000 since 2005.  Is it remotely close to fiscally-responsible to eat another $100,000 loss this year, too?

But what the heck…it’s only the taxpayers’ money.  If every other governmental body in this state can waste it, apparently so can the Park District.