If the majority of residents favor shared used of the facilities, then I think the next step is to monitor usage. Figure out what days and hours have the heaviest and lightest resident usage. Make the light usage hours available for teams. There is no justification for teams to be granted exclusive access during the most desirable time slots.

If the competition noise levels at 6am are disturbing to the neighboring residents, then the event organizers need to show some common courtesy and make changes. Either alter the hours, or find a way to communicate that doesn’t involve high-decibel sound levels.

What other soccer fields? There is one field at Westridge. The Town Square fields are used by flag football

Last year nobody had a minimum complain about the swim team, and the Bella Mar pool was used each morning (Tue-Fri) plus all the Saturdays events.

This year the HUGE difference has been the addition of the afternoon activities because of the Blue Team. Last year the homeowners of all this area (and also the others that like Bella Mar more than other pools and drive over here) didn’t raise any issue about the morning usage and the resulting confusion, and the Saturday’s events because they could use anyway the pool in the most important phase of the day, which is after work time, when families could go at the pool and enjoy the environment, in general from 5 to 8pm. The morning limitation and the Saturday’s events were balanced by the pool availability in the afternoons.

With the addition of all the afternoon activities this year for the Blue Team, the homeowners started talking among them, and after a few emails, when we realized this was really a general and almost total concern, then we went to HOA to find out how was possible that everything was done at Bella Mar.

So, what we would like to see, and we will obviously all work on that, is just a balance between John Simpson and Bella Mar. Keep in mind that also scenarios like splitting the same team across the two pools could be possible, just as alternative. But it is obvious that the current approach won’t be accepted for a second time, unless it will be the overall general result of a focused feedback from all the Steiner Ranch homeowners.

With all the respect, the problems tied to starting blocks, lanes, and equipment, shouldn’t even be part of the equation. If things are not feasible because there is not enough equipment, well, the swim team size will have to be adjusted to the reality of things, not just expect to overcrowd by definition a pool. But if the swim team is so important for 400 families, I’m sure that part of the fee there could be arranged also the money to buy new equipment. A team should be always sized based upon equipment availability.

To summarize, things are very simple: we need to fairly balance between the two lap pools we have. The fact that Bella Mar has a splash area that can be used also while kids are swimming is not a justification to always use this pool, because we all know what the environment is like when kids are practicing. It is simply not usable for people with a bit smaller kids, because dangerous and very noisy. In fact now during the practice people will small kids are driving to the TownSquare kids pool. And this is why also when John Simpson will be used for practice, the homeowners won’t be able to complain about the closure of the pool, because they will also be able to drive. Not sure if I made well the point: during the current practice the Bella Mar people are in general either not going to the pool or driving to the Town Square, so as long term solution we will expect to split between the two pools because during that timeframe people of the two areas will have to drive anyway to the TownSquare pool.

As a good example, just think if the red team would practice Tue-Fri two mornings a week at Bella Mar, two mornings at John Simpson, and the Blue team would do the same (Mon-Thurs) in the afternoons: we would be able to split the burden across the two pools, and never have practice both morning and afternoon in the same pool. How does that sound ? The schedule would be the following:

Monday morning: NONE
Monday afternoon: Bella Mar, Blue Team
Tuesday morning: Bella Mar, Red Team
Tuesday afternoon: John Simpson, Blue Team
Wednesday morning: John Simpson, Red team
Wednesday afternoon: Bella Mar, Blue Team
Thursday morning: Bella Mar, Red Team
Thursday afternoon John Simpson, Blue Team
Friday morning: John Simpson, Red Team
Friday afternoon: NONE

But again, we will go into the details later when HOA will work on this with all of us.

I calculated the percentage of Bella Mar pool time, as though the 2 Bella Mar pools (rec and lap) were the only SR pools, and I calculated the percentage of overall pool time across all 4 pools. I took into account the actual pool hours which I believe are 5 am to 10 pm (so I wasn’t padding with nighttime hours) and scheduled closures for cleaning. I assumed that the swim season was mid-May (when the team starts practicing) through the end of August — 15 weeks. I used the actual week numbers for the Stars swim programs in place.

Bear in mind that the total involvement with the Stars programs is 600 kids representing 400 resident families. There are about 3000 homes in SR, so the swim team serves 13.36% of the families in our neighborhood.

Pretending the Bella Mar was the only pool facility in SR, the swim team uses a total of 12.48% of the available pool hours at that facility. Taking into account the existence of 4 pools in SR, the swim team uses a total of 6.1% of the available pool hours. If you only count the hours from 8-8 (omitting early morning or late night lap swimmer hours), considering the 4 pool reality, the swim team uses 7.2% of the available pool time, and if you further count only the Bella Mar pools from 8-8, the swim team uses 14.7% of the pool time. So the only one of those scenarios in which the percentage of pool usage time is greater than the percentage of the population benefiting from the team is if you look at ONLY the Bella Mar pools and only the abbreviated hour set, and even then it’s not outrageously disproportionate.

Now, this obviously doesn’t address the expressed desires to have the teams spread out over the John Simpson and Bella Mar facilities in the future, which is something we can all reasonably talk about after this season is over, but I hope everyone will consider these numbers — and run them yourself to check me (I tried to err on the side of exaggerating swim team usage hours and not exaggerating available pool hours so I wouldn’t be “fudging” the numbers) — and evaluate whether the team really is or is not being allowed an unreasonable or disproportionate amount of pool time at present.

You mentioned that the two lanes for adult swimming were already planned. Do you know how ? The swim team was planning to use all the 8 lanes, and in case you would have liked to swim, you should have ASKED for a lane. If you know what the pool is like when the swim team is practicing, this was obviously equivalent of not having any lane available, since nobody would have ever walked there asking for a lane. So, after discussing (A LOT) about the point, HOA asked them to leave two lanes empty and mark them well as reserved for adult swimming.

As far as schedule goes, the SWIM TEAM WEBSITE was showing also Friday afternoon until 9:30pm. I have a hadcopy of the printout we brought to the HOA for our meeting, that shows it. And during the meeting the swim team people mentioned that Friday was REMOVED from the plan, with our good satisfaction.

We are all looking forward to see the survey from HOA about the long term planning, and I’m sure this time all the Steiner Ranch homeowners will be informed about all the details, all the perspectives, all the alternatives, and they will take the decision about how a reasonable, fair, balanced approach should be. And I’m also sure we will ALL be paying the highest attention about how the communication is going to be provided.