PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- More than 200 people, including a large number of adults with children in tow, rallied outside the Davey Lopes Recreation Center Friday evening to protest plans by the city not to reopen the center's pool both now and forever.
"Go ahead, take away all the resources for the kids. See what happens," declared Councilman Davian Sanchez, one of rally organizers. "It doesn't make any sense."
Sanchez, along with a number of other participants, contended that closing an inner-city pool, especially when there is concern that young people need more things to do to help them stay out of trouble, is the last thing officials should be doing.
"This is something personal with me," said Sterling Washington, who said he had worked at the pool for 15 years. "My son was shot and killed just three blocks from here."
In announcing that the city would to shut down a pool that has been a summer recreational spot for more than a half century, Mayor Angel Taveras' deputy communications director, Liz White, cited a dwindling number of children using the pool. She said the number is substantially less than the average daily attendance at the city's four remaining pools.
Washington and Sanchez called that contention a "lie." Washington said attendance did decline at all the pools in 2010 after the city imposed stringent restrictions after the drowning death of a child at another pool. Under the new restrictions, children could not enter a pool unless a parent or guardian was present.