Burlington swim club fighting paperwork nightmare at city hall to get pool time

A group of parents and their kids are caught up in a battle with Burlington City Hall as their swimming club tries to get pool time to train.

The parents say their children’s swimming club is being shut out of Burlington’s swimming pools.

To make things worse, they say the city is preparing to hand over the city’s pool time to swimmers from Hamilton.

The parents say the city first told them they were caught up in a paperwork technicality and that’s why they’re losing their pool time.

But then they say they were given another story by the city and one that doesn’t make any sense.

The Burlington Aquatic Devilrays Swim Club has been around for 40 years, training kids to swim and some of them going on to the Olympics.

But the news from the City of Burlington is devastating.

“The fact that we might not have that next year, it’s heartbreaking actually,” said Siobhan Lemus, a Devilrays swimmer.

“We have panicked parents right now,” said Kimberly Calderbank, the president of the Burlington Aquatic Devilrays.

Calderbank said they applied to renew their pool training time last fall as usual, but the next thing they got was rejection – no contact even after 40 years of being pool users.

“Nothing,” said Calderbank, “we didn’t hear anything the entire time.”

They said the city told them they needed a “current and valid Certificate of Incorporation’ as a non-profit.

The club said there’s actually no such form, but they did submit documents showing that it was a non-profit corporation.

A Burlington city councillor told them they were rejected because, “the city requires that at least 85 per cent of registered participants be Burlington residents.”

The Devilrays say more than 85 per cent of their swimmers are from Burlington.

Now they say the city appears to be giving the swim time to an out-of-town club from Hamilton.

“It doesn’t add up, it doesn’t make sense,” said Calderbank. “This is devastating to our club – we have about 400 swimmers that will need homes if the City of Burlington doesn’t give us our city pool time back.”

Sergei Soloukhin, the head coach for the Devilrays, wonders if they did something wrong for this to happen.

“We feel we are part of the city and today, I feel like our club is an orphan,” said Soloukhin. “Something is missing and I’m not very sure what we did wrong.”

8-year-old Palmer Lowe wrote a letter to Burlington Mayor Marianne Meed Ward saying, “I go to school in Burlington, and I want to swim here too with my team, my coaches, and my friends.”

Burlington’s communications office said they conducted the process “in accordance with our procurement policies” and want to ensure “Burlington residents have primary use of our facilities.”

“Council is forbidden by law for [sic] being involved in any procurement process,” said a statement from Ward’s office, and referred questions to the communications office, adding “we are aware of the significant disruptions and concerns in the community.”

The swimmers say the politicians should be paying attention.

“At the end of the day, our mayor and our councillors need to understand what their staff are doing, and the decisions they’re making,” said Calderbank, “and a small mistake and technicality that is uprooting hundreds of kids in our municipality.”

“To think that the city doesn’t care enough about this sport and this club,” said Katie Lebel, a parent of a swimmer. “It makes you wonder what their ideals and ethics actually are.”

The swimmers said it doesn’t end here – they’re preparing to go to court to have a judge go over the city’s decision.

They also said that swim clubs around the region are supporting them.

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