LAKEPORT, Calif. — Fifty years and thousands of swimmers after it first opened, the Westshore Pool is set to be demolished.

The Lakeport Unified School Board on Wednesday night voted to award a $248,000 demolition contract to R.O. Construction, which later in the meeting was awarded a $59,340 contract to R.O. Construction for cobblestone work in the Terrace Middle School quad area.

The R.O. Construction bid was the lowest of two the district received on the pool project. The second was for $250,000 from Dillsaver Construction.

In its five decades, the Westshore Pool has entertained thousands of adults and children, including the Channel Cats and the Clear Lake High and Kelseyville High swim teams.

The competitive swimming program that the pool hosted resulted in many local students getting full ride swimming scholarships to colleges.

However, Jennifer Hanson, a Lakeport Unified School Board member and former Channel Cats president, said without a pool that can offer competitive swimming, the Channel Cats are now at about 40 members, rather than 300 as it had been when Westshore Pool was still open.

The city of Lakeport funded a complete renovation of the pool in 2007 and took the lead in operating the pool during the summer season.

But a series of events stretching back several years that included district leadership claiming it found that the pool wasn’t up to state standards, followed by the discovery of leaking pipes under the pool resulted in 2017 being its final summer and its closure in 2018.

Now, after years of languishing empty and vandalized, the pool is expected to be removed very shortly.

Lakeport Unified Superintendent Matthew Bullard informed the board that there will be some asbestos removal as part of the demolition process.

Board members Carly Alvord and Phil Kirby, and Board President Jennifer Williams-Richardson voted to approve the contract following a brief discussion that consisted largely of answering questions from Lake County News about the pool.

Absent for the meeting were board members Dan Buffalo and Jennifer Hanson.

Hanson, a passionate advocate for the pool who was the Channel Cats’ president for 26 years, said that had she been at the meeting she would have voted to approve the demolition contract.

She said she’s been advocating for a few years to finally fill in the damaged and abandoned pool.

“The pool is a danger,” she said. “Because they let it deteriorate as much as they have, it’s time to demolish it.”

Hanson’s viewpoint is understandable after seeing the pool. Following the Wednesday night meeting, this reporter visited the site. The buildings had been gutted, the pool was filled with garbage, bleachers, a damaged soda machine and other kinds of debris.

The pool and its buildings are covered with graffiti featuring every imaginable profanity and vulgarity, with the exception of one spot in which someone wrote “Be Kind” in black spray paint.

“It’s an open wound,” Hanson said.

It wasn’t always that way. At one point, it was a thriving and busy community facility.

“You remember the good times,” Hanson said.

The saga of the pool

In 1972, the county of Lake, city of Lakeport and the Lakeport Unified School District entered into an agreement to construct the Westshore Pool on school district property, with construction completed in 1973. It was designed by well-known Lake County engineer Cliff Ruzicka.

During its years of operation, the pool wasn’t just a place of summertime fun and a site for swimming competitions, it also fulfilled the critical function — being a place where children could safely learn to swim. The importance of that use is one Hanson has emphasized both as a Channel Cats leader and a school board member.

In 2004, the pool was closed due to the need for repairs. That same year, the city and school district entered into a 20-year memorandum of understanding in which the the city of Lakeport would operate the facility during the summer, with the district contributing funds.

In 2005, the Lake County Channel Cats approached the city to ask it to become the sponsor for a State Parks grant. In November of that year, the city received the State Parks grant in the amount of $168,000.

In May 2007, the city of Lakeport completed renovation of the 4,300-square-foot pool at a cost of about $380,000. Most of that money came from Measure I sales tax funds, along with the State Parks grant.

The following year, the school district informed the city that, due to budget cuts, it could no longer provide the financial support it previously had promised.

In the years that followed, the city raised concerns that the county and school district were not sharing the costs of running the facility. The county had provided one-time funding of $5,000 but didn’t offer other support.

The pool saga took another twist in January 2014, when — following separate discussions by both the city and the district about finding ways to fund needed upgrades — district officials said they were not going to open the pool.

That was due to then-Superintendent Erin Smith-Hagberg reporting that, over the holiday break, she had discovered an 11-year-old letter from the Division of the State Architect — the agency that provides design and construction oversight for facilities including K–12 schools — raising issues with the pool’s conditions and accessibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Later in 2014, the school district approved a contract with a consultant for soils stability testing. Ruzicka offered his services to help upgrade the pool for free and even went into his archives to give the district his original plans for the pool, which he gave to Hanson who, in turn, handed them off to the district.

By June of that year, the report on soil and slope testing found the pool was built on stable soil and allowed for the district board to approve an agreement with the city of Lakeport to operate the pool for recreational swimming that summer.

The year 2014 was important for another reason: Lakeport Unified launched its plans for the Measure T bond, which voters approved that November.

The $17 million bond measure was intended to fund the building of a number of new facilities, chief among them a new pool.

Hanson said the pool was prominently featured on fliers the district circulated in support of the bond measure, which passed with 65.9% of the vote. It needed 55% voter approval to pass.

However, Hanson said that the district had to finish a cafeteria and library promised in a previous bond before doing the pool.

In a 2016 interview, Smith-Hagberg told Lake County News that the district was planning to move ahead with full construction of a new pool with the bond funds, as the costs of refurbishing the Westshore Pool was considered to be too expensive.

Hanson said she recalled Mike Adams, the district’s consultant on bond projects, presenting a design of a new 10-lane pool to her at a bond oversight meeting. “It was this gorgeous pool.”

At a bond oversight committee, she said they were told that the fitness/tennis court/pool complex would break ground at the end of 2018.

It turned out that the pool’s last summer of operation was 2017. In December of that year, Hanson and her daughter discovered a leak in the pool, which she said was down by about 3 feet in depth from where it should have been.

It was determined that there was a leak underneath the pool. “Nobody ever knew for sure why it sprung a leak,” said Hanson, adding that it was believed to be an issue with a pipe.

Hanson recalled that Smith-Hagberg and Dave Norris — then the district’s director of maintenance, operations and transportation — said they didn’t plan to pay the $10,000 that a pool repair consultant told them it would cost to fix the leak because they were planning to build a brand new pool with the bond funds.

“That’s exactly what they said,” Hanson said, adding that she believed they knew full well that they weren’t going to build a pool.

While district officials maintained there were plans for a new pool facility, those plans never advanced to the point of building the new facility. Smith-Hagberg left to take a job in Calistoga and her successors also didn’t appear to support the project.

Community dissatisfaction got to the point where in 2018 the school district board was confronted by a room filled with residents angry that the pool they thought they would get with the bond hadn’t materialized.

Hanson said the situation with the pool led to her running for the school board, and that the handling of the bond was “the No. 1 issue” in that 2018 election.

She, Buffalo and Carly Alvord ran in 2018 as a slate with a platform that focused on issues like the pool and how the bond money was spent, which resulted in longtime board members Dennis Darling and Tom Powers being voted off the board. Norris later took a job out of county and left the district. Alvord, Buffalo and Hanson were reelected in 2022.

Board, superintendent respond to questions about pool

At the school board meeting on Aug. 9, Lake County News asked several questions about the pool and what comes after the demolition.

In response to a question about whether the district had researched renovating and upgrading the existing pool, Bullard said he had inquired with some organizations and they said the cost was prohibitive.

Board member Phil Kirby said the costs to fix the pool’s plumbing were exorbitant. That’s in addition to the Division of the State Architect having so many demands on schools, which Kirby would make a pool renovation more expensive than the district could afford.

Regarding what led to the damage to the pool, Kirby said it simply needed a lot of maintenance.

As for where the money to demolish the pool will come from, Bullard said it’s slated to come from facilities money associated with a grant. He said the demolition is appropriate for bond dollars but that a discussion of actually using bond funds to cover removing the pool would come later.

Asked if the demolition would trigger a requirement that the city of Lakeport repay the grant funding it received from State Parks to restore the pool, Bullard said he participated in a discussion with the State Parks Board and did not get the impression that would be required, as the board never brought up repayment.

Regarding what the district plans to do with the pool site going forward, Bullard said they will remove the existing pool structure and return it to usable space.

He said they could remove the pool and grade the hillside down but the district wants to return the site to its original condition. That will allow for a future board to use the space to put in a structure with a foundation.

Later in that meeting, Bullard updated the board about his discussions with Lakeport City Manager Kevin Ingram regarding a joint powers agreement, or JPA, involving the cities and the county for recreation facilities and a pool.

He said polling so far shows that a recreation center has only a 56 or 57% approval rating, which is not high enough to pass as a ballot measure for projects that are not school related. So now the JPA members are looking at grants.

Bullard said he and Ingram spoke about funds for a project. While the board set aside $1.2 million for it, Bullard said he doesn’t believe the remaining bond funds could be an approved use for a recreation center that is located off campus.

However, Bullard — and in the separate interview, Hanson — said the district’s proceeds from the sale of the former Natural High property, now the location of the new Lakefront Park, could be used for the project.

The city paid the school district $660,000 for the 6.9-acre property.

Bullard said he assured Ingram that Lakeport Unified is still interested in a pool solution. “We would absolutely be a partner in that.”

Right now, Bullard said they are in a holding pattern to see what the JPA might do. Then, they can readdress the bond funds that have been set aside. Bullard added that they need to finish the projects on the bond list.

Hanson said that she feels the district needs to reach out to the community and apologize for not building the pool, and own it.

“I always believed they were going to build a pool,” she said.

Remembering the good times

The decision by Lakeport Unified to move forward with the pool’s demolition came within a week of the publication of an article by Slate magazine on the closure of public pools.

The article pointed out that the nation's deteriorating public pools have led to drowning becoming a public health crisis.

It’s a concern Hanson herself has raised for years. “We’re not called Lake County by some whim.”

She said it comes down to the haves and have-nots — unless you are rich and have a pool in our backyard, you’re not going to learn to swim and you will be in danger of drowning.

With the public unhappy about the district not building another pool, Hanson is concerned. “We’re screwed. We’re never gonna get to a pool.”

As for those pool plans Adams showed her, Hanson said they weren’t seen again until Dan Camacho, Norris’ successor as director of maintenance, operations and transportation, found them tucked away in a file drawer.

Hanson said she told Bullard that she wants to be there for the Westshore Pool’s demolition.

“There comes a time when you just have to do it, for the safety of the children,” she said.

She said Bullard didn’t give her an idea of when it’s supposed to happen, but she believes it’s soon.

For Hanson, it’s been gut-wrenching to see the well-loved pool deteriorate into its current condition.

“Maybe eventually it won’t be sad anymore,” she said.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.