Tucson swim teams hit by pool fee hike

New city fees could force two eastside high school swim teams to find a new practice pool or face triple their season costs.

Mica Mountain High School swimmers have rented lanes at the eastside Clements Swimming Pool, near South Pantano and East Escalante roads, for early-morning practice four days a week for the last four seasons, said Thunderbolts’ coach Kimberly Farr.

The 12-week season cost for this fall will be $3,100 more than it was last year, after the City Council passed a set of fees that included hikes to virtually all of the city’s aquatics programming. Now, parents are petitioning the council to reconsider the pool fees, anxious that the costs will be passed on as higher athletic fees that could impact sport participation.

“It's just tough, you know. We want to make sure that every swimmer has the opportunity and that they keep coming back,” Farr said.

With their June 9 vote, the council also authorized the Parks department to increase fees annually for the next four years. Starting July 1, 2027, the cost will go up to $20 per lane per hour, and then will increase again to $25 and $30 in 2028 and 2029, respectively.

Tucson’s Parks and Recreation Director Lara Hamwey said her department’s latest cost analysis found that community groups' pool use is a significant financial burden for the city.

“When they share the use of the pool during public hours, we’re diminishing the full public capacity to use the entire pool, or if they're using it for exclusive use, that means that we're staffing it up just for that external group. What that ends up turning into is the city subsidizing someone else's program. In reality, our mission is to really be serving the public at large,” Hamwey said.

Although pools vary in size and staffing requirements, the city’s analysis found it costs the department an average of $100 an hour to pay lifeguards, and at $6 an hour, the city doesn’t make enough of that cost back, according to Hamwey.

“At $18 a lane, if they rent at least two, then they're covering about 50% and they're also using about 50% of the pool at the same time as the public,” Hamwey said.

Still, according to the parents’ projections, the new rates could bring the team’s season cost to over $8,600 in 2029, more than triple the cost of their 2025 season, Mica Mountain Principal Nemer Hassey said.

“I am OK with increases, and we can adjust, but to do it so quickly in one year, it’s just really drastic for us,” he said.

The next four years of fee increases reflect anticipated cost adjustments to staffing only, and don’t include other pool costs like maintenance workers and chemicals, which Hamwey said would have made fees even higher.

“We're also not coming to them and saying, ‘Hey, help us mitigate the cost of the chemicals and the utilities and the preventative maintenance or the facility maintenance that's also required.’ I think that it's fair to say that the city is also experiencing cost increases,” she said.

For now, the team is set to stay afloat at Clements pool for the next two years with discretionary funds from the Ward 4 Councilmember Nikki Lee’s office, Hassey said. But Farr has already begun asking parents and swimmers for feedback on two alternative practice locations that are further away.

Cienega High School’s swim team also uses Clements pool and is receiving funds from Ward 4 to stay for this season, Hassey said.

Lee told the Star she did not support the fee increases passed at the June 9 meeting.

“While I did not support the Parks and Recreation fee increases, I am happy to allocate $25,000 in Ward 4 funds to ensure Vail School District high school swimmers can continue competing and thriving,” she wrote in a statement to the Star.

Lee attended that meeting virtually, but left before the specific vote on the Parks fee increases.

Earlier in the meeting, she voted against approving the city’s budget, which included additional revenue from increases in water, trash, and development fees as well as Parks Department services.

Lee said she couldn’t support the budget because of the allocation of around $60 million in general fund dollars to the city’s transit system.

“My goal is to reduce the general fund dependency on subsidizing transit and identify sustainable funding sources that can alleviate pressure on the general fund. Doing so would allow us to direct more resources toward road maintenance, public safety, parks and recreation, which are our core services …” she said at the June 9 meeting.

Chau-Tam Sisterman’s two sons, Keegan and Roger Sisterman, are both swimmers on the Mica Mountain team. In August, current junior Keegan wrote a letter to the Tucson City Council urging them to reconsider their fee increases because his participation on the swim team has improved his confidence and self-esteem.

“Seeing a team so thriving and inviting made me feel like I was in the right place. Soon enough, all my struggles and worry went away because I knew I had two great coaches who believe in me every step of the way, and a team of great people who could support each other in everything, in anything,” he wrote.

Her son now takes honors and AP classes, Sisterman said.

“He sets his alarm to get up in the morning by himself, so that’s the part that I see as a parent of how he has grown so much,” she said.

Because Lee did not participate in the fee vote, she can’t bring it back to the table for reconsideration under the city’s charter rules, her Chief of Staff Teresa Smith wrote in an email to parents.

If no other council members bring it forward, Smith wrote, parents would have to continue the lobbying process through next spring, when the city hammers out its spending priorities for the next fiscal year.

Lee told the Star in a statement she is hopeful the council will reconsider the pool fee structure next year.

“We don’t want increased pool fees to become another barrier to our student athletes. This is especially important in Ward 4, where residents already have access to fewer City Parks and Recreation facilities and services,” she wrote.