HAMLET — About 30 people showed up for the regular city council meeting and a public hearing on the city’s swimming pool ordinance Tuesday night — and two residents came forward seeking clarity on both the current and proposed versions of the policy.
“We have a swimming pool ordinance inside the city limits,” Hamlet City Manager Marcus Abernethy said as he opened the discussion. “Currently, anyone with a swimming pool must have a fence or barrier separating the swimming pool from the street.”
He said that one resident with an above-ground swimming pool with a detachable ladder has asked whether the wall of that pool would serve as the barrier.
“And the way the staff has always interpreted it is that even if it’s an above-ground swimming pool, you could just step off the street and hop over the however many feet into the pool and drown,” he said. “And that’s a safety concern, so that’s how staff has always interpreted it and we wanted to clarify and make sure that the ordinance itself states that very strictly.”
Gail Strickland, Hamlet’s zoning coordinator, addressed the assembly to explain the reasoning behind the ordinance as it currently stands and with proposed changes for clarification.
“Every year we have situations where pools are put up,” she said. “They do not meet this zoning compliance that was set up in, I think 2009, and when the ordinance was adopted that year, it was the intention at that time of the planning board and the council that any swimming pool over 24 inches that had a soft-side material would require to have a separate fence, a barrier.”
Strickland said that pools have changed a lot since 2009 and the practice had not changed along with them.
“The purpose of the changes is to clarify that a pool with an all-resin or metal wall can serve as the barrier as long as it is 48 inches or higher,” she explained. “But if it is a soft-sided pool, the vinyl, the rubber, the type that can give so that a child can climb up it, then those types do not serve as a barrier and that an additional 48-inch barrier needs to be there. We’re just adding clarification to the type of pool wall that requires the barrier. Nothing else is any different.”
Strickland mentioned it had been brought up that someone could have a 36-inch pool with less water in it and wondered whether the ordinance took those situations into consideration.
“This is the same ordinance that we have adopted since 2009,” she said. “Every year, I mean it’s heartbreaking to me, we get a call that somebody’s bought their grandchild or bought one of these small inflatable pools that are 48 inches or 3-foot that’s the soft-sided and we’ve had to tell them they either have to put up a fence or have to take it down. But it’s a safety issue. As sad as it is to have to take a pool down, it’s sadder if a child drowns.”
Strickland said the city does not go out looking for violations of the ordinance because most of them are received from tips called in by neighbors or other residents who notice a problem.
“Believe you me, I call them the Pool Police,” she said. And when those tips come in, they are investigated and followed up on, and only then are they given notice if there is a violation of the ordinance.”
The owner of the pool is also given a respectable amount of time to comply, she said.
Strickland said it is a difficult rule to enforce, but if her office received a call and did not respond with enforcement and a child died, she was going to feel a lot worse.
“It’s a matter of safety,” she said.
She added that even in the case of hard-sided pools, where the pool wall does qualify as a barrier, if it also has a ladder, then that ladder must be removed or lifted up, otherwise a fence must be built.
Katie Miller lives on Oak Avenue and has an above-ground pool. During the public response invitation from Hamlet Mayor Bill Bayless, she approached the mic.
“I was one of the people that got called on this year,” Miller said. “What they are requiring here seems like permanent pools don’t have to have a fence around them but other pools do. So a pool that is only going to be up for the summer has to have a fence around it. That doesn’t make much sense. My pool was a 48-inch vinyl pool that was not soft. It holds I think 4,000 gallons of water. If the ladder is removed, I didn’t see the issue with it. I just don’t think vinyl is soft. I think that’s what you guys are thinking.
“As long as the ladder is removed and it’s not soft, it’s hard vinyl, the only way you can get into it is if you are tall enough to step over a 4-foot wall.”
She explained that her pool is the kind that must be put together and has the steel poles that go into the ground. It has slots for the poles to go through and from there, into the ground, and the pool itself sits directly on the ground.
“They say it’s a complaint-based system and that’s not fair,” Miller said. “I think if it’s going to be enforced, it needs to be enforced throughout, not just certain people. Like I said, I live on Oak Avenue and back behind me there’s been a pool all summer.
“I’m not going to call on someone because I don’t think that’s fair, but two streets over on Henderson Street, my daughter and I were riding bikes and saw two pools over there. Again, I’m not going to call on someone because I don’t think it’s fair.”
The council agreed that as long as there’s no access to a pool meeting that description, there seemed no good reason to say it’s in violation of the code.
Councilman Johnathan Buie said that if the ladder is removed from a pool without a soft side, it stands to reason it should not pose a safety hazard.
“It’s a matter of safety,” he said. “What I would like to see is more focus on safety and not so much on the fence. I think you can make them safe by removing the ladders and I think that’s something that needs to be looked at. And this is not the voice of the council, just my opinion, but if you have a pool and you can secure it, it’s like the government is coming and telling you what you can do with your yard and that’s not our job. Safety is, certainly.”
Buie also pointed out that on social media websites, people were writing posts that made it seem they believe officers go driving around all day looking for violations of the ordinance. He assured everyone that is not the case at all.
Buie called the code confusing and difficult to understand and suggested the council re-examine it.
Herbert Bruce of Battley Dairy Road also had advice to give on pool safety. Over the years, Bruce said he has had three cars land in his pool. They have run off the road, plowed through his fence and hedges and trees, and his barriers were useless.
“The only safe kind of pool to have is not to have a pool,” he said.
Strickland returned to the mic and said that she was simply stating what is in the ordinance, and that since it is her department’s job to enforce it, she would appreciate more clarity from the council as to what to enforce.
All council members agreed to look more closely at the issue and review it at another time.
Reach reporter Melonie McLaurin at 910-817-2673 and follow her on Twitter @meloniemclaurin.
