Vallejo recreation district to reconsider winter closure of Cunningham Pool

VALLEJO – The Vallejo Aquatic Club swim team and their supporters packed a Greater Vallejo Recreation Board of Directors meeting on Thursday to ask the board to reconsider a three-month closure of Cunningham Pool.

The district’s preliminary budget for the 2026-27 fiscal year includes a plan to close the pool during its slowest months, from the last week of November through the first half of February, for an anticipated $160,000 in savings. A similar winter pool closure was implemented for the current fiscal year. 

Over 20 speakers advocated keeping the pool open year-round. They included many swim team students ranging in age from 6 years old through high school age, their parents, grandparents and coaches. They touted the Aquatic Club’s programs as beneficial for participants’ self confidence and social lives as well as their athletic ability.

GVRD board chair Thomas Judt said it was nice to have a full room of people with passion about youth sports show up with thoughtful, well articulated comments to share with the board. “It was persuasive, and now we need to sharpen our pencils and figure out how we keep a great youth program active at the same time paying all our bills,” he said.

Judt said the board directed the budget finance committee to look for ways to move money into the swimming pool account. He said he reached out to state Sen. Chris Cabaldon's office and asked if they know of anything that might help cover the gap, and that Vallejo Community and Volunteer Coordinator Shelee Loughmiller mentioned searching for potential grants that might keep the pool open.

“Being one of the few Olympic-sized swimming pools in the region, it's a sought-after commodity,” Judt said. “But the flip side of that is much more expensive to maintain, especially during the winter months when heating bills are higher.”

The club’s athletes who spoke at the board meeting said that pausing their daily athletic routine over the winter would make it impossible to be competitive in spring swim meets. They described the disruption caused by the closure of the pool last year, which caused some students to switch to swim teams outside of Vallejo, never to return, and others to miss practices altogether.

Several speakers mentioned the inconvenience and cost of driving to swimming facilities in Fairfield or Benicia. 

“It's a stressor, on not only children, but also parents and families to try to get to Fairfield after a long day of work,” said Rachel Harrington, who has a 12-year-old daughter on the swim team. “Although you think that November through February is a slow month, it's not slow for us. Our children are training, they are perfecting their skills.”

Tiffany Tatum said that her 11-year-old daughter is enthusiastic about swimming every day. “When we think about it, for Black children, it has been a tradition of basketball or football, and to give them an opportunity to go beyond that is huge,” she said.

The club’s head swim coach Sophie Waterson led the room in a chant dedicated to the swim club’s mascot, “Go Sharks!”

“We do not cancel practice lightly,” she said. “We canceled practice tonight because this is the most important place that we have to be right now.”

The nonprofit, parent-run Vallejo Aquatic Club club offers a variety of coached swimming experiences that are organized and scheduled separately from GVRD’s aquatic events and classes. It is part of Pacific Swimming, the third largest of USA Swimming's 59 regional associations, which provides club members opportunities to compete in regional and national swimming meets and championships. The club also offers grant funding to help qualified members pay dues and competition fees.

Vallejo used to have two other public swimming pools. The Cunningham Aquatic Complex is now the only one. The Vallejo Plunge closed in 2017 and the Richardson Park swimming pool had been closed for about a decade before the facility was bulldozed in 2016.