Every summer, Neyir Urminsky, her husband and four children basically live at their local pool in Montreal West.
“I have a kiddo who’s a competitive swimmer all year long, so in the summer he has swim team in the morning and at night,” said Neyir Urminsky.
“The other kids are doing swim lessons and if they’re also doing day camp, the swim lessons are part of that.
“And then you just go to the pool to cool off, so I feel like we spend a lot of time there.”
Usually, a family membership at the town pool is $125 plus tax. An individual membership is $80 and $65 for seniors.
This year, the town has proposed to scrap memberships altogether and implement a pay as you go system.
They want to charge $5 per adult and $3 per child.
For a family like the Urminsky’s, that works out to $22 each time they visit the pool.
“You’re not going to be dropping $22 five or six days a week,” said Urminsky. “Or even for the average family, it works out to $16, if you have two kids. Those are a lot of costs.”
On top of that, the pool, like others in Cote Saint-Luc and in Pointe-Claire, will be operating under a reservation system.
Residents can reserve a one hour time slot to swim, once a day.
The town says they decided to change their fee system for this year, simply because members won’t have the same access as they usually do.
“Under a reservation system, where you can only allow in a fraction of the number of people that were previously been allowed, they might not be able to have frequent access to the pool,” said Montreal West councillor, Elizabeth Ulin.
However, the town says after receiving some complaints, they’ve decided to review the new fee system.
They should have a modified configuration by the end of the week.