Council won’t dive into pool

Councilman Ara Najarian, a swimmer who fought hard against attempts to scale back the pool’s design, was relatively quiet during the discussion, except to suggest that he believed the pool would bring in more revenue than the $50,000 to $100,000 city officials were projecting.

“I think they are rather conservative,” he said.

Councilman Dave Weaver, who has repeatedly voted against the project as infeasible during a time of budget reductions and tight finances, remained silent.

Chapjian said he was concerned about how his department, which has seen its budget cut $1.3 million in the past three years, would fund the pool’s operation. Estimates peg the annual operation at $375,000 to $550,000, depending on the length of summer programming.

“Given that we have seen cuts in the department, we really don’t have the money in the department to fund this operation,” Chapjian said.

In order to operate the pool without cutting other parks programming, the city would have to reprogram $1 million in Capital Improvement Project funds currently slated for rehabilitating Maryland Mini Park, which is expected to receive state grant funding in coming months, he said.

The city could also apply for more outside grants, he added, but those are in short supply.

“We’ve been looking all over for programmatic dollars, but they really aren’t out there,” Chapjian said. “We really need to look internally to fund the operations.”

Get in touch MELANIE HICKEN covers City Hall. She may be reached at (818) 637-3235 or by e-mail at melanie.hicken@ latimes.com.