PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Chanting and holding signs saying "Save Our Pool" and "City Kids Need to Learn to Swim," more than a dozen people paraded outside a fundraiser for Mayor Angel Taveras Monday night to protest his decision this summer not to open the Davey Lopes Pool.
The protesters -- including 12 adults and 5 youngsters and teenagers -- kept their distance as they marched on the sidewalk across from the Circe Restaurant and Bar, where the fundraiser was being held in the Weybosset Street financial district.
Taveras refused to reopen the pool this July even after a heat wave hit the city early in the summer, saying that the pool did not attract enough swimmers and would have been too costly to repair. Parents responded that without it, children in urban neighborhoods would have no place to learn how to swim.
Leah Williams Metts, one of the organizers of the effort to reopen the pool in her South Providence neighborhood, said she hopes residents will be more successful next year.
"The mayor should take the $180,000 he's paying his top aide and use it to fund the pool," said Anthony Sionni, one of the other marchers.
Some of the other protesters said they hoped some of the guests attending the mayor's fundraiser, aimed at helping him make an expected run for governor, would have been moved enough to donate money to repair the pool.