When a pool is more than a pool: How Cranston's Budlong Pool became a political lightning rod

CRANSTON – As the humidity and heat bore down this summer and the massive Budlong Pool sat unused for the fourth year in a row, the anger toward Mayor Ken Hopkins became palpable.

“He’s upset a lot of people,” said Karen Rosenberg, a former union organizer and the chair of the progressive group Cranston Forward.

The Budlong Pool is Cranston’s only public pool. Built in the 1930s by the the Works Progress Administration (renamed the Work Projects Administration in 1939), it’s larger than an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Hopkins, a Republican, has been fighting to replace it with one that would be a third of its size – and faces mounting pushback, which lately has been amplified by his political rivals.

“These neighbors never felt listened to for three years. They didn't have a voice. And the frustration built up,” Rep. Barbara Ann Fenton-Fung, R-Cranston, who is seen as someone who could mount a formidable challenge to Hopkins in 2024, said at a Wednesday night meeting about the future of the pool.

Hopkins has repeatedly described the Budlong Pool as “obsolete” and “antiquated,” and maintains that investing in the repairs required in order for it to reopen would be fiscally irresponsible, and a “Band-Aid solution.” Speaking to WJAR in August, he claimed that the pool “cannot be fixed” – though the reports and studies that his administration has commissioned say that it can still be repaired – at a cost.

Fierce resistance to a new Budlong Pool two-thirds smaller than today's

Meanwhile, for at least a year and a half, Cranston City Council meetings have regularly featured bitter spats between the Hopkins administration and the majority-Democratic council about the future of the pool. But things heated up this summer as Rosenberg and another resident, Susan Blake, helped rally considerable opposition to the mayor’s proposed $3.5-million redesign.

In July, more than 2,000 people signed Cranston Forward’s petition opposing the project. And more than two dozen residents showed up to an Aug. 28 City Council meeting to speak out against Hopkins’ plans to shrink the pool.

“This is a ridiculous waste of money for something no one wants,” said Sam Brusco, who wore a beach towel slung over his Hawaiian shirt.

Rosenberg and Blake spent the summer filing public records requests, and they claim the mayor has been misleading the public about the Budlong Pool’s condition. Hopkins rejected that notion at Wednesday’s five-hour meeting, telling residents that he had “never, ever once – as your councilman or as your mayor – lied.”

For about 30 minutes, the mayor spoke without interruption, striking a defensive tone as he decried “political posturing,” called out Rosenberg and Blake by name and said that his whole life had been dedicated “to public service and giving back to kids.”

“Some say that I don't listen and do whatever I want,” Hopkins said, noting that he has been portrayed as “King Ken.”

The “personal attacks” have only made him more determined to “get to the truth” about what needs to happen with the pool, he said, later adding that he has “done nothing but work on this project” and respond to public concerns over the past month, and had many sleepless nights in the process.

New Budlong Pool design has smaller footprint

Generations of Cranston residents fondly recall spending long summer days in the cold, crystalline waters of the Budlong Pool.

“It’s the sort of thing where once it’s gone, you can’t get it back,” one resident, Melissa Willis, said at the Aug. 28 meeting. “It’s very unlikely that there will be a pool that size in our city or the surrounding area again.”

But the push to save the pool isn’t driven just by nostalgia.

Residents who spoke at the August meeting emphasized that Budlong Pool was a place where teenagers with working parents could stay out of trouble, underprivileged children could learn to swim, and adults could cool down and swim laps after work. A scaled-down version would only appeal to families with young children, some argued.

“The pool is the place where everyone in the community can come together and create new connections and new friendships,” Blake said in an interview. “There's plenty of space for everyone, and I think that’s essential.”

From Hopkins’ perspective, it no longer makes sense for the city to have such a gigantic pool, since it’s only used for a few months of the year. He wants to demolish it and build a new one that would measure roughly 7,000 square feet, and use the rest of the $3.5 million to make the bathhouse building handicap-accessible.

Other amenities, like a splash pad and pickleball courts, could be added in the future if funding is available, he said when he unveiled the concept for the new pool in March.

Residents pushed back, arguing that the smaller pool wouldn’t be deep enough for children to learn to swim. On Wednesday, Hopkins said that he’d directed the architects to add a 6-foot deep end and lap lanes in response to public feedback. (The pool would also have a "zero-depth entry" suitable for toddlers, according to the presentation.)

More: Cranston mayor wants to replace Budlong Pool. Here's how, and when it would open

At least one resident, Monica Maye, was swayed. “I owe the mayor an apology,” she said, explaining that she’d previously thought that the pool was being replaced by a splash pad.

But others remained skeptical about the notion that building a new pool was preferable to fixing the old one.

“I think this will end up costing more than three or three-and-a-half million,” said Alice Petrone. “And I think the fear of people here is that that's exactly what will happen. And then what? We end up with a smaller pool for the same amount of money as if we fix the big pool.”

“Brand new isn’t always better,” she added.

Even basic facts have become a lightning rod

The Budlong Pool has sat empty – save for some stagnant, greenish-brown water on the bottom – since 2019.

Former Mayor Allan Fung opted not to open the pool in 2020, citing concerns about COVID-19. In 2021, Hopkins’ first year in office, it remained closed: A spokesperson for the mayor’s office told the Cranston Herald that, given the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, funds for getting it up and running hadn’t been set aside in the budget.

Then, in spring 2022, the Hopkins administration announced that the pool could not safely reopen, pointing to an architect’s report that said that it was "close to the end of its serviceable life” and would cost around $2 million to bring up to code.

Ever since then, the condition of the pool has been the subject of fierce, and sometimes arcane, debates.

Vocal residents, along with some Democrats on the City Council, have questioned whether the situation is really as dire as the mayor claims. They’ve picked holes in the two studies the administration commissioned – noting, for instance, that one incorrectly claimed that the pool lacks depth markers.

Basic facts have become a source of disagreement. For instance, according to a report produced by Weston & Sampson Engineers this summer, the pool loses 15 to 20 gallons of water per minute when full. But Tony Liberatore, the city’s former parks and recreation director, called that figure into question on Wednesday.

By his calculations, he said, refilling the pool at that rate would have resulted in a $6-million water bill.

Cranston’s water bills routinely totaled $4,000 to $6,000 during summer months when the pool was open, Hopkins said during his presentation.

Critics have also taken issue with the fact that Weston & Sampson was brought in by Saccoccio & Associates, the architecture firm designing the pool. When a resident voiced concerns about a conflict of interest at Wednesday’s meeting, Mark Mariano, the Weston & Sampson engineer responsible for the report, said that no one affiliated with his firm would be building the pool.

In Rosenberg’s view, there needs to be an independent inspection of the pool, conducted by someone who doesn’t have any “skin in the game.” Until then, she said, “I don’t think that you can even have an intelligent, honest conversation about it.”

Through an Access to Public Records Act request, Rosenberg obtained a copy of an estimate that New England Aquatics had sent the city back in June 2021, stating that it would cost $89,620 to perform needed maintenance and get the pool up and running for the summer.

Other emails released as part of the records request showed that Anthony Moretti, the mayor’s chief of staff, had told the council that the start-up costs would total $120,000. In a subsequent message to Councilman John Donegan, he noted that other repairs might also be needed since the filtration and pump system couldn’t be tested until the pool was filled.

Still, at the Aug. 28 council meeting, Blake accused the Hopkins administration of “hiding” the estimate, and said that it suggested that the pool could have reopened at a relatively modest cost. Those claims were subsequently echoed by some members of the City Council.

“I don’t blame the public for being outraged, because I know I sure as heck share that outrage,” said City Council President Jessica Marino. She subsequently attempted to question Moretti about which engineers had visited the pool in order to inspect it.

“I’m not here to be interrogated, ma’am,” Moretti responded, calling the meeting a “fiasco” and saying that the council was drawing biased conclusions based on “mistruths.”

Hopkins, for his part, said on Wednesday that the 2021 estimate was premised on the notion that everything was in “working order,” and didn’t reflect “the true cost” of opening up the pool.

Are politics driving the dispute?

Though she’s helping lead the charge against the demolition of the Budlong Pool, Rosenberg never swam in it. She’s lived in Cranston for 25 years but was always busy traveling for work, she said in an interview, and got involved only after she was contacted by Councilwoman Aniece Germain, who had been fighting a “lonely battle” against the mayor’s proposal.

As Rosenberg learned more about the situation, she concluded that the issue was that there was “no public process” or attempt to survey residents and find out if they actually wanted a smaller pool.

Cranston Forward is a political organization, but Rosenberg disputed the notion that the pushback to the mayor’s pool plan was politically motivated. Opponents to the project also include Republicans who supported Hopkins as mayor, but disagree with his approach to the pool, she said.

On Wednesday, Hopkins noted that many people in Western Cranston “don’t want their taxes affected, and they could care less about a pool.” He contended that only a small fraction of city residents wanted the Budlong Pool to reopen, but said that he was fighting to fix it nonetheless.

Meanwhile, the dispute has revealed a political rift: Hopkins is considered Fung’s hand-picked successor, but he’s now at odds with Fenton-Fung, the former mayor’s wife.

Without going so far as to argue that the city should preserve the existing pool, Fenton-Fung criticized Hopkins’ “top-down” approach towards building a new one in an August letter to the Cranston Herald, and suggested that the mayor wasn’t listening to residents.

“From the outcries during public comment at recent council meetings, it's quite clear we're barreling down the road and spending millions of taxpayer dollars towards something that many in the neighborhood aren't keen on,” she wrote.

Hopkins responded with a statement accusing Fenton-Fung of “political posturing,” and contending that she was seeking to “inoculate her husband” from being blamed for the poor state of the pool.

The tensions were even more apparent when Fenton-Fung spoke up on Wednesday, and criticized what she described as “ugly” behavior at the last council meeting.

Hopkins had campaigned on the notion that he was “going to be Allan Fung 2.0,” she said, but her husband “treated everybody with respect. He would have never let his director of administration speak to a council president the way that Mr. Moretti did last week.”

“These are personal vendetta comments,” Hopkins responded.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Cranston's Budlong Pool plans caught in a political fight