Important updates regarding swim team

Benicia Stingrays

Hi Team,

 

Stingray Registration!!!!

As difficult as it may be to believe, swim team registration is just around the corner!  We will open up registration on February 1st to returning families only.  Register between February 1st to February 15th to take advantage of Early Bird Registration. On February 16th, we will open up registration to new families to the team.  

 

IMPORTANT Actions to Save the Pool!!!

On a very different, but very important note, the city of Benicia is in a dire financial crisis.  The city needs to make drastic financial cuts to attempt to stay on budget.   A large expense for the city is the James Lemos Pool.  The pool does not generate any money for the city, it is just an expense.  Normally, the city opens the pool on February 1st for lap swimmers.  To save money this year, the pool will not be opening until April 1st.  This means that our Spring practice season is going to be one week shorter than normal, and we may not be able to host a new family clinic to open our practice season (we are still working to find a pool that may allow the new family clinic to occur).  If you have, or will have, a high school swimmer, this is drastically affecting their swim season as their practices start the first week of February. 

PLEASE, take 5 minutes to fill out this survey https://mossadams.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_b9JjPoTGVYw8NcG

This survey asks the Benicia citizens how we want the city to allocate our limited funds.  Closing the pool is repeatedly listed as a budget saving move.  Please read the questions carefully and answer the questions to prioritize the pool as an important part of our community. The last question of the survey is open-ended.  If you can respond with what the team means to your family and how much swim team affects your child's emotional and physical well-being, we can hopefully impress upon the city planners how important the pool is to our community. 

Please have every family member with an email address fill this survey out.  The more we voice our concerns, the bigger impact we can have.  

The deadline for the survey is Friday, January 26th!!!

If you want to have an even bigger impact, there will be in person and zoom meetings you can attend

Here is the direct link to the City of Benicia's Resiliency Plan