In hot water again

Joanne Reyeg guides a supine Crystal Lee through the 92-degree, solar-heated saltwater pool at the Tamarack Wellness Center in south Eugene.

“It helps her relax,” Reyeg says of Lee, 29, who was born with cerebral palsy and cannot speak. “And she also likes to socialize.”

Chuck Tombe, 70, of Springfield, a regular user also enjoying Wednesday’s noontime “Open Therapeutic Exercise,” knows why Lee is so fond of the center’s wheelchair-accessible indoor pool.

“What this pool does is bring her smiles and happiness,” says Tombe, who likes to gently pull Lee through the water while Reyeg, her full-time aide, watches closely.

The 30-by-50-foot pool is mostly used by what staff members call a “vulnerable population,” one that includes veterans, the disabled and accident victims who pay $7 a visit or get monthly or yearly punch cards that provide a discount if paid in advance. The center also has a few hundred half-price scholarships available, program manager Amanda Canani says.

The aquatic center and its therapeutic pool, however, are once again in danger of closing. Operated since 2003 by the nonprofit Tamarack Wellness Center, and maybe the only one of its kind between Portland and San Francisco, the venture is in serious need of financial help.

The pool has been operating at a deficit for years, even back when it was owned by the nonprofit Easter Seals Oregon.

Easter Seals built it in 1979 as part of the school for disabled children that it operated for decades in the 3500 block of Donald Street. Easter Seals eventually sold the property to a private buyer. Now called the South Hills Center, the privately owned for-profit entity leases space to a variety of tenants. Tamarack leases the pool building from South Hills Center.

Tamarack says its pool draws about 3,600 users a month. Because of a lack of money, the agency closed the pool for three months in 2011 and laid off almost 30 mostly part-time staff members. A major fundraising drive, the second in as many years, allowed it to reopen.

The staff now numbers 22, including three administrators who equal two full-time positions. The others are lifeguards and swim instructors who work mostly for minimum wage.

According to income tax filings, the Tamarack Wellness Center had revenues of $314,237 in 2014 and expenses of $326,346, leaving the nonprofit organization $12,109 in the red. The center relies mostly upon fees for about 70 to 80 percent of its revenue.

For years, the pool was sustained by $20,000 monthly subsidy payments from South Hills Center owner Sue Sherman, who bought the Easter Seals building in 2003 for $600,000.

But Sherman ended those payments, originally intended as a loan, in 2010. She forgave the loan, which by then had totaled about $1.1 million.

“(South Hills Center) is very stable with the exception of the pool,” says Kassy Daggett, South Hills’ general manager, who also has her own life-coaching, consulting and therapy practice inside the building.

“It doesn’t matter to us how the pool continues, what matters to us is that it does,” says Daggett, who adds that she has a meeting set on Monday with Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy to see if the city, which has three public pools — Amazon, Echo Hollow and Sheldon — can offer support.

Under a current one-year lease that began July 1, South Hills leases the pool to Tamarack Wellness Center for $4,250 a month. That includes $2,400 in rent, $800 in shared utilities and a $1,050 contribution toward South Hills’ loan for a previous purchase of solar panels around the property, several of which are on the pool building’s roof and heat the pool’s water.

South Hills is increasing the rent by $200 on Jan. 1, so Tamarack’s total monthly payment will be $4,450, Daggett says.

“And we can’t afford it,” says Leslie Scott, who co-chairs the Tamarack Wellness Center board, while bobbing in the water Wednesday on a floatation device. “We risk eviction at this point. And I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Holding some city programs at the pool would certainly be a welcome option, says Susan Quash-Mah, the pool’s director since May and a staff member since 2010. That could bring in more revenue for Tamarack.

But the immediate cash infusion she is hoping for could come from the area’s major health care providers.

Quash-Mah has approached PeaceHealth, Trillium Community Health Plan, the Slocum Center for Orthopedics and Sports Medicine in Eugene and PacificSource, the Springfield-based health insurance provider, about contributing $1,000 a month for three to five years.

Next on her list is McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center in Springfield.

If all buy in, that would be $5,000 a month for the pool and give it the financial backing to pursue the Tamarack Wellness Center’s dream of buying the pool outright from Sherman, who on Thursday said she’s open to the idea.

“I haven’t gotten anybody to open their checkbook yet, but I think it’s just around the corner,” Quash-Mah says.

She and others also have met with Casey Woodard, of the philanthropic Cottage Grove Woodard family, who now runs his own consulting business.

Woodard says he’s had three meetings with Tamarack folks at no charge and has no contract with the center. But he’s willing to help guide Tamarack on another “major gifts initiative,” and admits that, like many, he has an “emotional connection” to the pool.

Woodard slipped on a patch of ice while he was employed by PeaceHealth in 2012, during a trip to PeaceHealth’s Ketchikan, Alaska, hospital. His right leg, broken in two places, was healed with the help of regular visits to the Tamarack pool.

Julie Mills, 52, was floating in the pool on Wednesday. Born with arthrogryposis, a birth defect that causes curvature of the joints, she uses a wheelchair. In the therapeutic pool, though, “I’m buoyant,” she says.

“I can move my legs. I’m getting stronger. I’m doing a lot of exercises in here. The warmth of the water relaxes my muscles and I’m able to stretch.

“It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

But theraputic visits to a saltwater pool are typically not covered by health insurance programs, so Taramack has to get by on what it can charge customers directly, and on donations.