Dear Swim Families
We are writing to confirm that the Pool management has changed its Policy regarding pool entry.
The YMCA pool management will be Charging pool entry upon your arrival in addition to your swimming lesson fees
Child / concession - $2.50
Adult / parent - $5.00
Children under 4 - Free
Spectators - Free
This charge is in addition to the facility hire fees that we already pay. At this point in time the pool management have revoked any right that our hire fees can cover your pool entry. Our management team are seeking to address this as it seems unreasonable to us.
The change has been done without any consultation with our organisation or effective communication about its implantation. We have raised the concern with the pool management staff about the unreasonableness of the situation and have not had an effective response, our next action is to seek a response from council to assist. Any support from our customers to council communicating the unreasonableness of the fee levied by the management will help us in seeking a positive outcome.
We sympathise that a single fee is not covering your term swimming and are doing all we can to see this addressed.
OUR CONCERNS / POSITION
The change has been implemented without consultation
Other educational oganisations & swim school organisations are charged fees that allow their use of the facility to cover their students pool entry or will do by simple requirement of logistics (we have been denied this possibility). Examples will/do include include
Swim & survive (school programs)
Delivered by multiple swimming organisations including Swim Dynamics
Aquatic training course providers (swim teacher training/Lifeguard courses etc)
It seems that some individual swimming education orgaisations appear to have have been excempted from the new tax levied against parents
The new charging system seems to be specifically targeted to help YMCA tax families and make them feel uncomfortable for seeking to give their kids a quality aquatic education at their local public pool with their chosen swim school.
Parents and families should be allowed to pay a single fee for their term swimming fees, be confident and focus on the business of making our children safe and healthy around water.
What we have done so far
We have delayed a planned fee increase in Term 1 understanding the potential impact to customers
We need to point out that our costs to deliver will be essentially the same whether the pool charge you for entry or not and we are absorbing a direct loss of income until the issue can be addressed by council.
Our fees are competitive and value for money even if you add $25 ($2.5*10) per student . ($215 per child / $240 per adult)
Whilst this does not immediately address your concerns (the need to separately pay pool entry each visit) please understand that we working tirelessly to address what we can
We have raised the above points with pool management repeatedly
Our next actions
We will be engaging council to mediate and address our concerns
Call to Action
If any of our Families have skills that may help us navigate this issue please contact us we would welcome the support. We are happy to acknowledge that our strengths lie in education and swimming not politics or beurocracy.
Most importantly we wish to apologise to all families for this inconvenience and let you know that we sympathise and feel your pain. We feel just as highly offended about the fact that the pool management will be accosting families each day at entry making families feel uncomfortable and overburdened whilst you are trying to focus on your children, learning to swim and building safer families around the water. Please feel free to strongly express your dissatisfaction with both pool management and council to help us see this resolved.
Council can be contacted here darwin@darwin.nt.gov.au