THE NEW POOL GATES

As I was leaving the UCO Reporter office the other day, I came across a man working on the new gate to the Camden pool. (For those of you who don’t know, the Reporter office is at the Camden pool. You must go through the new gate to get to the office.)

I saw for the first time what everyone has been talking about: how you must pull down on the spring-loaded solid tube to unlatch the lock on these new gates to the public pools. I saw how the top of this solid tube is quite high, about 54 inches, I believe I’ve read. Operating as they should, I can see the new gates would keep out small children, which I suppose is their purpose. Kids over seven years old could probably manage the lock mechanism better than we adults.

The man working on the gate talked to me about it for several minutes. Completely aside from the difficulty many people have had in reaching the top of this activating solid tube, he said it was important for people to realize the gates are meant to ONLY SWING OUTWARD. This, he explained, is because there is another spring mechanism (which he showed me) that automatically shuts the gate. He was going around repairing all the new gates, tweaking this and tweaking that, because people in their frustrations had made them unworkable in one way or another.

When I went back to the Reporter office a few hours later, something had already failed. The gate was open, swung outward but not swung back to the closed position by the spring mechanism. Apparently the gate mechanisms break down easily.

I don’t know what the future holds for these gates, but if we are to keep them, I think several people suggested: outside and inside each gate have a sign that explains how to use it. Perhaps it should be partly pictorial. The sign should make it clear how to pull down on the solid tube, and it should also explain that the gate is meant to open only outward—AWAY from the pool enclosure.

Or—keeping in mind precocious five-year-olds who can read—would such a sign be a bad idea? The "how to," in any event, could be explained in the Reporter and possibly on channel 63.