The Baltimore City Recreation and Parks Department held a community open house Wednesday evening at its headquarters at Druid Lake Park to discuss changes to its pool facilities and summer programming.

About 50 Baltimoreans in attendance asked questions and aired grievances about some of the agency’s logistical and programming switches, especially its hiring of lifeguards and the decision to open several city pools six days a week rather than seven.

The pools at Druid Hill, Lake Clifton and Riverside will be closed every Monday, while the Patterson, Roosevelt and Middle Branch pools will be closed every Tuesday this summer for “weekly maintenance days.”

“In order to protect the city’s investment, we had to take a step back and see what benefits our pools the best,” BCRP Deputy Director of Recreation Karen Jordan told the attendees.

She said that after careful consideration, officials chose the maintenance days for each pool based on the days of the week those pools were least busy.

One attendee asked Johnson whether the pools closing one day each week means that they aren’t being maintained every other day of the week.

She explained that while pool staff members at each of the city’s pools clean and complete superficial maintenance on a daily basis, the dedicated cleaning days are to ensure that the more technical aspects of their operations are handled regularly. This is to stave off more long-term pool closures, such as the closing of Patterson Park pool in 2023, due to flood damage and repairs.

Another community member raised her concerns about the number of lifeguards at each of the city’s public pools — a worry that was also mentioned in a recent audit of BCRP that determined that the agency might not be meeting staffing regulation requirements.

The audit cites a Baltimore regulation that requires at least one lifeguard on duty at a pool for the first one to 30 people, then one more lifeguard for every additional 50 swimmers.

According to BCRP Chief of Aquatics Nikki Cobbs, the agency is finalizing its lifeguard hiring process and has an applicant pool of approximately 150, which should be enough to handle the estimated average of 3,371 people who visit Baltimore city pools each day.

Baltimore City pools will be open on weekends beginning Saturday, and weekdays beginning after the last day of school June 17, according to the BCRP. The agency plans to hold another community open house at the end of the season.

Have a news tip? Contact Mathew Schumer at mschumer@baltsun.com, 443-890-7423 and on X as @mmmschumer.