Athena City Recorder Michelle Fox tried everything to attract teens to work this summer at the city’s swimming pool.

“I put it on our reader board, ‘Lifeguard shortage: Athena Pool may be closed due to lifeguard shortage.’ We took flyers over to the high school,” she said. “We’ve sent information, we’ve put it in announcements and we posted it.”

Five students applied but struggled to pass the lifeguard course, not an unusual problem in this era, according to aquatics experts.

As of May 16, Fox no longer had to keep up the search. At least for 2024.

Athena contracts with the Walla Walla YMCA to staff its public swimming pool. The Y’s CEO Karen Hedine told Fox this spring that without applicants, she couldn’t staff the facility.

Opening the pool during July only had been trotted out as a possibility, but doesn’t make sense for Athena, Fox said.

Not only is the aging pool difficult to get up and running, area wheat harvest happens at the end of July. Every teen who is able wants to earn good money that way, she said.

A recent meeting between city and YMCA officials smoothed the waters. Athena has hired a pool manager while the Y is providing three lifeguards and a certified pool operator to maintain the water’s chemical and mechanical systems.

The agreement allows the public pool to open June 17 through Aug. 23.

“Now I can cross this off,” Fox said.

The situation with public pools in small town Eastern Oregon is part of a nationwide crisis.

The cold waters of reality

A lack of staffing and rising costs are bringing waves of change to how city-owned facilities operate.

It’s difficult to find teens who can or will work during summer and even harder to find high school students with the swimming proficiency necessary to qualify for lifeguard training, area officials told EO Media Group.

The problem isn’t confined to this area, according to a recent report by the American Lifeguard Association, a nonprofit which promotes aquatic safety.

About a third of the country’s 309,000 public swimming pools remained closed or opened sporadically in 2023 due to a lifeguard shortage, and the situation looks equally dire this year, said B.J. Fisher, director of health and safety for the organization.

The report noted COVID-19 played a role in the shortage: “Social distancing meant fewer training opportunities for new lifeguards and recertification. Typically, about 300,000 new candidates are trained every year through various programs. The pandemic has disrupted the training programs, resulting in fewer candidates being trained.”

The ALA says the lifeguard shortage has significant impact on communities. The cycle is clear — without enough lifeguards, public pool accessibility is limited or nonexistent. That cuts off kids from learning in safe, monitored water. Those children then lose the opportunity to become good swimmers, leading to a lack of lifeguards.

Parks and recreation officials and volunteers in Northeastern are working exploring ways to continue to provide pool availability for their communities.

La Grande, Pendleton making it work

Veterans Memorial Pool in La Grande is in a good position when it comes to the number of lifeguards on staff, but Parks and Recreation Director Stu Spence recognized that it can be difficult.

“It’s always a challenge to fill lifeguard positions,” he said.

This was especially true coming out of the coronavirus pandemic. Spence said during the lockdown lifeguards weren’t able to do the necessary training to stay certified and certifications lapsed.

There was a shortage of lifeguards following the pandemic for this reason, Spence said, but he finally feels La Grande has gotten back to a good spot. Veterans’ Memorial Pool has around 15 lifeguards, plus a few staff members who also are certified.

Staff look to recruit teenagers who have come up through the swim club and the high school swim team to become lifeguards. Training is in-house and the certification process is intense.

“We don’t take any shortcuts, it’s all about safety,” Spence said.

He added it can be difficult to compare staffing needs between pools throughout the region because every pool is going to be different. For example, he said, the number of lifeguards La Grande needs for its indoor pools is going to be different then what the aquatic center in Pendleton needs for its pools.

Liam Hughes, Pendleton Parks and Recreation Department director, isn’t taking anything about running a public pool for granted these days, including staffing.

He also has a personal connection to the importance of knowing how to swim.

While vacationing when he was a boy, he went swimming with his father at the beach after lifeguards had departed for the day, Hughes recalled.

It was a big mistake, he said.

“Me and my dad got sucked out in a riptide … We’d grown up around beaches, but there was no surf or riptide there,” he said.

Only their strong swimming skills allowed them to escape it.

“It was a thing my parents insisted on. I took lessons, I was on swim team, and I had to do those until I could stay alive in the water,” Hughes said.

That many children in this region are not versed in water safety is a serious issue.

“I do not see enough people coming in and trying to learn,” he lamented. “They come in and go down the slide but not enough parents focus on swimming and technique.”

Fortunately, the city has veteran recreation supervisor Jeff Hamilton.

In his two decades with the city, Hamilton has fostered a positive environment at the public pool. In turn, that’s kept generations of families connected to the facility, Hughes said.

There are teens working there whose folks did the same job years earlier, Hughes said, crediting Hamilton’s in-house swimming and training programs.

It means the Pendleton Aquatic Center is “OK” for staffing the upcoming season, the director said.

Hermiston trying to keep above water

The roster for the Hermiston Family Aquatic Center is not where Brandon Artz would like it to be.

The executive director for the city’s Parks and Recreation Department said recruiting for pool staff has yielded spotty results the last couple of years.

“We like to start hiring and training by mid-May and it’s not happening. We use about 100 staff, 80 of those are lifeguards, and we are less than half of that right now,” Artz said in early May.

The students who apply at the pool are generally high achievers involved in multiple activities. “If we’re not flexible, they are going to look somewhere else for work. Or, in some cases, they quit,” Artz said.

Like Pendleton, Hermiston trains its lifeguards in-house for about 40 hours. Soon, however, new American Red Cross rules will raise the bar.

“The standards keep going up and it’s almost unattainable,” Artz said. “We are a seasonal pool. Most kids haven’t swam since September. And if you don’t pass the test, you don’t get into the course. We do see some kids so dejected because they really wanted to be lifeguards.”

Officials try to mitigate those losses.

“Teens come in and they don’t have the skills yet, they’re not prepared. We say ‘Hey, we see you can swim and you can dive, but not far enough. Come in, we’ll help train you.’ We help them get proficient enough. Because we need these people,” Artz said. “These teens want to do well and they want to show up.”

Working at the pool looks good on resumes and teaches important life skills, not something that happens with every employer of teens, he noted.

Boardman swimming strong

Joshua Marquez is the aquatics coordinator at the Boardman Parks and Recreation Center in Morrow County, and he is more than pleased with the increasing number of workers searching for a job.

The requirements to pass the lifeguard exam are not difficult for the recreation center, only the Red Cross lifeguard test is needed for Marquez to extend a job offer.

“Our staff is predominantly high school students,” he said.

The recreation center is one of the few employment opportunities available in Boardman for younger workers. The center needs three to four lifeguards when the slide and pool are open, and with the steady stream of workers applying for a position, there is no shortage.

Milton-Freewater shortens season, hours

Public swimming pool problems boiled over at the May 13 Milton-Freewater City Council.

The city has struggled to find enough employees to work at the Joe Humbert Family Aquatic Center. Especially lifeguards.

This summer the situation has affected the number of days and hours the pool will be open, according to officials.

Since 2020, the city has contracted with the Walla Walla YMCA for management of the pool. The agreement with the Y kept the traditional summer pool schedule intact, opening Memorial Day weekend and closing at the end of August.

This year, however, YMCA’s CEO Karen Hedine — citing a lack of lifeguards — proposed a contract that doesn’t open the pool until June 17 and closes it Aug. 23, a total of 67 days. As well, the pool will close daily at 6 p.m. instead of 8 p.m.

The Y will charge the city $141,270 for the truncated 2024 season. In 2023, the city paid $147,000 for 90 swimming days that were each two hours longer.

The 2024 season will cost $600 more daily — from $1,500 to $2,100 — with fewer hours than 2023’s, Councilor John Lyon pointed out to Hedine.

At the meeting Hedine, the council and city employee and recreation committee Chair Ryan Westman discussed the pool’s challenges, including that youths can make more working at Walla Walla’s Veterans Memorial Pool, thanks to Washington state’s higher minimum wage.

Hedine said the Y is paying pool staff here at that higher wage because of that, but Milton-Freewater still loses lifeguards to Walla Walla.

In the end, the council voted unanimously to retain the YMCA for pool management for 2024 and accept the shortened season unless funding and employees can be found to change it.

Baker County YMCA also facing challenges

Koby Myer, CEO of the Baker County YMCA, which operates the city-owned pool, said staffing has been a challenge not only for lifeguards but for other YMCA positions.

But he said the Y has been able to certify enough lifeguards, most of whom are teens, to maintain a schedule during June that’s “comparable” to recent summers.

“We’re taking it month by month,” Myer said on June 13.

Myer said the Y is fortunate to have Paula Moe as its longtime aquatics director.

Her efforts to train lifeguards is vital to keeping a regular schedule at Sam-O Swim Center, Myer said.

“We’re super fortunate to have someone who is so dedicated to aquatics,” he said.

— The Observer reporter Isabella Crowley, East Oregonian intern Tori Schuller and Baker City Herald editor Jayson Jacoby contributed to this report

This summer means the opening of a new pool in Helix, said Parks & Recreation District board member Tom Winn.

And, unlike other pools in the area, staffing for it is well in hand, he said.

The moment comes after a great deal of work by the small, agricultural community to raise about $2 million to replace the most recent version of the pool, built almost 50 years ago.

Contractors are scrambling to finish the facility with the expectation to open the pool in early June, Winn said, calling it “an exciting story.”

Helix has a hiring preference for local students, a partnership that pays off.

“Because we are a charter school, those enrolled students get a leg up for training and positions. Kids are getting training at the Round-Up Athletic Club,” he said. “We have had really, really good luck.”

Pools, in general, “are black holes of misery and money” and Helix is no exception there, he said.

However, the town’s culture puts community assets such as the pool and the adjacent park as top priorities. The school supports swimming by giving every student a pool pass.

“There’s a really close relationship with everything that happens here, and the pool is part of that,” Winn said.