With the city of Dearborn anticipating $20 million budget deficits both in 2010 and 2011 due to a 30% decline in revenues, the immediate future of six of the city’s small outdoor pools appeared to be in serious jeopardy heading into Monday’s meeting with local officials at City Council Chambers.

Dearborn’s public Ten Eyck swimming pool.

But thanks in large part to an outpouring of community opposition to the potential closures, the city’s Crowley, Hemlock, Lapeer, Summer-Stephens, Ten Eyck, and Whitemore-Bolles pools will remain open for at least this summer, according to Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly.The announcement at the start of the meeting drew thunderous applause from the large crowd of citizens, who dressed in red to show their support for the Save Our Pools (SOP) movement, which started with a Facebook group created by 15-year-old Dearborn resident Danielle Misovich.While news of the extension was welcomed by the gathered crowd, the fight to save the pools going forward is expected to be long and difficult.”These are unprecedented times, we are currently a part of the worst economic situation since the (Great) Depression,” O’Reilly said.”At the end of the day, the target is that we must achieve a balanced budget and we must not spend or commit funds we don’t have. The budget continues to go down and we’ve got to be responsible.”Officials have estimated that it will take $3.8 million dollars to repair all three pools under a multi-year schedule. Upgrading each of the pools to make them safe will cost an additional $550,000, and each pool costs about $60,000 on average per year to operate.Dearborn Director of Recreation Greg Orner also spoke at the meeting, presenting facts about the department relevant to the situation.Many SOP members were surprised to see that the the department’s list of priorities for recreational services placed pools 11th out of 11, with parks ranking at the top of the list.The Ten Eyck, Crowley, and Whitemore-Bolles Parks were ranked as the three outdoor city pools with the lowest priority to be saved according to Orner. Local lifeguard Ryan Woods also spoke at the meeting, proposing ideas to help remove the financial burden of the pools on the city going forward. Woods proposed corporate sponsorship of pools, selling bricks to residents for engraving during potential renovations, selling pool tags, and using city archive collections of photographs to sell framed pictures to local businesses as examples of ways to raise money. A packet of information passed out by SOP also proposed the idea of applying for federal grant money as the cities of Taylor, Grand Haven, and others have recently, netting more than $100,000 each for recreation projects that included outdoor swimming pools. SOP members are expected to look into the possibility for possible grants for Dearborn.O’Reilly said that the city will continue to work with citizens to explore all avenues for recreation funding.”What we want to do is get into an honest dialogue about what the issue is and what potential things that can be done; none of us want to close pools but we don’t want to do half the things we’re going to have to do to make the budget work,” he said.