A hot, dry summer meant a banner year for the CAR Pool.

The City of Warren Parks & Recreation Commission took a look at the season during a Tuesday meeting.

“Financially, I know that the revenue was the best I’ve seen it for a lot of years,” Department of Public Works Director MIke Holtz said. “This was a banner year for the pool.”

He said attendance was good and that a “perfect storm” — the community appearing to come out of the pandemic and the “best swimming pool summer in 10 years” – combined to boost the pool.

“It definitely was a blue sky summer,” Commission chair Mike Suppa said.

Holtz said that the city’s playground program was also “very well attended as compared to previous years.”

The biggest challenge with that program, he said, was finding the staff to run it. That prompted the city to only run the program at two parks compared to the customary three.

“It’s tough to find anybody to work,” he said. “It’s not just sitting in the chair watching them play.”

POSSIBLE MERGER DISCUSSED

The commission also discussed the possibility of merging with the Street Landscape Committee.

Holtz said the Parks group is down to five members with Street Landscape down to four.

There would be several steps to make the change happen – a review of bylaws, city council approval and settling on a meeting time among them. Resolving that one entity is a commission and one is a committee would be another hurdle to jump through.

“It’s not going to happen overnight,” he said.

“(I’ve) often wondered why,” Suppa said, “they were separated in the first place.”

There was discussion that the city once had nine playgrounds and 15,000 people, conditions obviously no longer relevant.

Holtz said the groups “cover similar issues. There’s some similarities.”