A potential wild card has arisen for Berkeley pools politics: a federal lawsuit that could significantly delay the closure and demolition of the Warm Pool.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco by Terry Cochrell, a Warm Pool user who is unaffiliated with the Berkeley Pools Campaign. The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, who gained fame presiding over the Barry Bonds BALCO case. The lawsuit alleges that the Warm Pool is in unsafe condition and is non-compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). The lawsuit seeks an injunction against the City of Berkeley and Berkeley Unified School District barring the planned December closure of the Old Gym building that houses the Warm Pool and ordering that the pool be brought into compliance with ADA code. The plaintiff's filing can be viewed at this link, and the School District's response can be viewed at this link.
Procedural steps that were ordered by the court Sept. 15 seem likely to stretch into early December, with no date yet for the trial to start or even for a hearing to decide on the plantiff’s injunction request. The School District has requested a jury trial, which could potentially stretch the case out for a much longer period.
All of this means that a delay appears very possible for the scheduled December closure and January demolition of the Warm Pool. This, in turn, could delay the School District’s plans for building new classrooms and gym facilities at the high school.
The current lawsuit appears to have no direct relation to a lawsuit in 2007-08 by preservationists and conservative anti-tax activists seeking to preserve the Old Gym. The School District emerged victorious in that lawsuit.
We want to emphasize the following:
The Berkeley Pools Campaign has no involvement whatsoever in the current lawsuit, and we want to remain completely neutral. Of course, we are fervent supporters of the Warm Pool, yet our main focus is attempting to persuade the City of Berkeley to put an all-pools bond measure on the 2012 election ballot. We're not lawyers and we have no opinion about the ultimate legal responsibility for the Warm Pool. But in strictly political terms, the Berkeley entity responsible for providing public recreation and health facilities (such as the Warm Pool and the other pools) has always been the City, not the School District. It‘s also worth mentioning that the Berkeley Pools Campaign has always been a strong supporter of Berkeley’s public schools, and vice versa. As our co-chairs said when we endorsed the School District's Measures H & I in the November 2010 election, “we believe pools and schools are two sides of the same coin.”
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