 Judy, it's the middle of February, we just had another snowstorm here and we're talking about swimming pools. What's the event about today? We are raising money to be able to provide swimming lessons to children at the Reiki School. A lot of people don't realize it but when the Reiki School was built it also incorporated a community center and along with that they have a wonderful pool facility. So the children are provided swimming lessons but they are not free so we do provide funding for two grades of school children to get swimming lessons. Is that pool available to anyone in the community or just students in the school? The pool is available to anyone in the community for a very nominal fee. I think they charge one to two dollars for Portland City residents. And what are you doing here today? So we're holding a silent auction. We have various items that have been donated generously through different businesses and individuals in the community and we're just going to have a good time here. We've got some snacks and some drinks and we're going to try to raise money. And who are the speakers here today? We have Joe Gray who is a former city manager, Nick Mavidonis who is a city counselor and former mayor. We also have Paul Stevens and his family talking about experiences they've had at Reiki Pool and Holly Seliger who's been on the school board. The swimming program at Reiki is the only activity that WENA supports financially. The other neighborhood efforts we're involved with require volunteers time and elbow grease but this is the only one for which we regularly raise funds and solicit donations. Our goal is to raise $6,000 by the end of February to fund the programs for two years. I am often amazed to hear people say that they never realized that Reiki is a community center as well as a school. I'm doubly amazed when someone says I never knew there was a pool at Reiki. I have to say that this bothers me and I really wish that the community center side of Reiki were much more intensively used by more people of all ages, all day and evening and all year round. We in the West End are especially fortunate to have a combined community center and school complete with a teaching pool. To live on a peninsula and not ensure that every student leaving Reiki has had an adequate opportunity to learn to swim ought to strike anyone as misguided and irresponsible. Through your generosity we hope to make sure that all Reiki students have that chance and will continue to work to ensure that the city of Portland's assets and facilities located in the West End are used and enjoyed to their highest advantage by all age groups in the community. I also want to recognize our corporate sponsors, JB Brown and Sons, Bragg Operating Resources, Advanced Pierre Barber Foods, the West End Portland Harborview Hotel and Graphic Ware. Also Harmon and Barton's florist provided the lovely flower arrangements and I also want to tell the winner board how much I appreciate them for putting up with my craziness and countdowns and thank them for a job well done. Judy Weatherall and Clifford Trumblay raise your hands. They are the co-chairs of Silent Auctions so if you have any questions about any of this bidding process and so on there are the people to talk with. Ian Jacob is the event coordinator. He coordinated all this lovely flowers and the whole setup here with the West End. Rich Mason, where is Mitch? There he is. Hey, he along with Dick Stevens and Bjorn Swenson brought us into the age of Paypal that you could buy tickets online. And then we also have Penny Stevens who's back at the Will Call table, Liz Parsons and Jen DePhilip who helped set things up here today. But they're also in charge of a second event that we're having on Wednesday which is February 19th and that's actually at the Rikie Pool. For those of you who got left behind during February school vacation and didn't make it to Disney World or the Caribbean, you can come that night to the Rikie Riviera. For $5 bring your bathing suit and your flip flops and have a good time. You can play some games or have the pool be open. You can swim and so on. We also have Christine McHale who's vice president. I don't see her here. And then also on the board are Lena Good Simpson and Tom McMillan who could not be here today. Hey, lastly I want to thank Bruce Wennerstrom, the manager of the West End. Back in November when we started planning this event, we had hoped to have it on Valentine's Day but Bruce said no. Well did I know that Bruce is the West End's own Punxsutawney Phil and I really appreciate the weather that he arranged for us for today rather than Valentine's Day. Thank you for coming and for your generosity and engagement in the neighborhood. Now I hope that you'll enjoy yourselves at one of the first public events at the fabulously renovated and re-energized Eastland Hotel. We have some speakers. We're going to start with sort of a little historic review of Reiki with Joe Gray who is the former city manager who at the late 60s, early 1970s was in the planning department and helped to actually plan Reiki. So we'll turn this over to Joe. Thank you, Roseanne for giving me the opportunity to share with all of you my involvement with the planning and the construction of the Reiki School and with its various community features including the pool. I want to start by taking you down memory lane and talk about two important local decisions that were made in the late 1960s and the early 1970s when I was first moving to Portland and working for the city and the then Portland Renewal Authority. These two decisions were largely focused on the West End and resulted in the building of the Reiki School. The first was Portland's decision to be involved in the Model Cities program, a President Lyndon Johnson's great society effort to rebuild older city neighborhoods with the focus on citizen participation and developing the plans and programs for the neighborhood. Portland designated the West End, the West End prom, Bayside and Parkside as its model neighborhood but the center of real action was in the West End. And committees were formed and I know there were some people who are here today who can remember those committees. They worked late into the night developing plans for new social service health recreation programs and creating neighborhood based community organizations such as the Portland West Neighborhood Planning Council which is now learning works and I'm really taking you down memory lane when I mentioned LIP which was the low income people which was a housing advocacy group in the West End. There were programs which offered publicly financed loans and grants to rehab homes and apartments something that had never been done before by the city and also the city was actually helping to fund and construct new housing which resulted in the building of Danforth Heights and the infill housing at Dermott Court. The committee also identified educational needs of the neighborhood including the possibility of a new school because at that point when they were doing the planning no one really knew whether or not one was going to be built but they all understood that a new school would be an essential part of the overall plan for the success of the Model Cities program. The second pivotal community decision was taking place as this Model Cities effort was moving forward. That event was the decision by the school committee and the city council to close three West End elementary schools, McClellan, Butler and Rosa True and also a fourth that was not considered part of the West End, the Shalers School on Center Street and to consolidate all the students in one building to be built in the West End. These schools dated back to the 1800s. They lacked many educational amenities, had little or no library space, few common areas and very limited if any outdoor play area. In addition to closing three public schools the Catholic diocese decided to close the Sacred Heart Elementary School in the Parkside neighborhood. So the entire West End neighborhood was to see four schools close at the same time. You can well imagine the intense community debate which preceded and followed the decision of these to close these schools. Today it's hard enough to get a consensus just to change a school line, district line, let alone close one school. Small and more intimate schools with a long history educating West End children were to be replaced with a large state of the art for the 1970s community school. Equally important in that discussion was we had to build a school because there was no vacant site that could accommodate the expected size of the school and the community features that the model city's plan and that the neighborhood envisioned and that the neighborhood was promised. Finally the decision was made to locate Rikie between Brackett, Clark and Spring Streets to build meant the acquisition of three blocks of housing and some neighborhood stores. Some of you may remember the Malconian Market which was a long time family owned and operated store which was located at the corner of Spring and Brackett Streets, an example of one of the businesses that were required. This was the hard part of the decision because to create the site for the school about a hundred families and individuals had to move. Many who had owned their homes for years and had long ties to the neighborhood. All the buildings were going to have to be demolished and the site cleared for the construction of the school. At first it was a willing buyer and willing seller, the property owner selling and the city buying but later in order to complete the site the renewal authority on behalf of the city had to use eminent domain and actually unfortunately forced people to leave their property. Despite the intense community debate on the closing of so many schools and whether or not the proposed site was the right one and the relocation of so many families and individuals the city council by a five to four vote made the difficult decision to move ahead using urban renewal funds to create the right key site. Once the decision was made though the community focus shifted to the design of the critical features and pieces that would make up the new school. The open classroom learning environment concept so much in vogue in the 1970s was embraced. It was decided that the school should be able to accommodate up to 700 children and include a community health station, a library branch, space for adult education classes, a media center, a gym and recreation programming and extensive outdoor play space. An interesting design feature was the crossover outdoor ramp which you all can associate with the school. It was designed to be located where one of the former streets that used to intersect the blocks where the school is was located. And also certainly the recognition of the community pool. Finally as reported in the then Portland Evening Express newspaper on a late November day in 1973 the students from the former schools walked to the newly constructed 2.7 million dollar Reiki school with their books and personal belongings in shopping bags. And it's a picture from the then Evening Express of the kids from each of the schools walking and meeting each other at the new Riking school. I think it's a great picture all carrying their shopping bags. It should be noted that from the early meetings there was always strong interest to include a community pool in the school. While the city operated the Kiwanis pool as a seasonal pool on Douglas Street the only other available pools were at the YM and the YWCA. Yes there were community features to the school. I mentioned the library and the health station. But the committee involved in the school design felt including a pool available to all residents of the neighborhood and city made Reiki truly a community facility. An interesting side fact is that the pool was dedicated to Harold Hap-Frank who was a longtime YMCA executive and a former city council chairman. They didn't have mayors at that time. They call them chairman as a gesture of appreciation for his interest in recreational opportunities for Portland's youth. The success of the Reiki pool was very influential in later decisions to incorporate a pool in the building of the Rivet in school in the late 1970s. Over the years there's been much discussion about the physical design of Reiki as a learning environment which has resulted in interior modification of the school space. But there has always been broad support for its various community features notably the pool which continues to this day. I'm pleased that early in my Portland career I had the opportunity to play a role in helping to create the Reiki school site and later a city manager helping fund many of its community programs. And I want to thank you for letting me share some of these memories with you all today. Thank you. But right now we have another speaker for you who is going to talk about the importance of learning to swim. And I'm happy to introduce you Councillor Nick Mavidonis who was on the school board, not when Reiki was built, right Nick? But I'll turn this over to Nick. And one thing I do want to let you know about is we are, this is all being filmed by CTN, community television. You see the bright lights over there. So every time you walk up to get a drink you're being captured on film. And we'll count those trips at the end. But seriously you do, Wenna is a member of CTN and this will be on their web archives afterwards. So if you look for Wenna you can see this event. And you also can see the film from Phil Thompson Day that we did at the State Street Church last spring. So right now I'll turn this over to Nick. Thank you, Rosanne. I have to say I'm not quite as prepared as Joe Gray was when he came up here with his folder and his printed materials. But it is a very nice pleasure to be here. I appreciate the invitation. When you called I wondered why you wanted me to come. But I'm pleased to be here. I first of all want to commend all of you for your efforts at raising funds so that Reiki school students can learn to swim and summer programs for kids who live in the West End. As an elected official it's very difficult at times for school boards and city council to continue to fund things that have always funded. And you know I've been through on the city council. We, Joe talked about the Kiwanis pool. There have been many efforts that, not efforts, but there have been many times there have been proposals to close that and again that's only open in the summer. But those are things that municipalities do. We had a thing a few years ago regarding swimming with a therapeutic swimming program that believe me none of us knew how important a program that was for the participants in that until there was a discussion about closing that program. So as an elected official the efforts that all of you actually things like this where people raise money and are able to continue to fund programs that are very important in the community really need to be commended. As Roseanne said I'll talk a little bit about what do I say on the importance of learning to swim on your program. I've spent a lot of my life actually all of my life around the water. I didn't grow up in Portland but my family had a summer home on Great Diamond Island and I learned to swim there. Our house was probably 200 feet from the beach so we were always in the water. My kids were always in the water. When they were growing up however they learned to swim. I think it was at the YW before it was torn down and they swam on the island like all island kids do some very elite island kids were grown up here who have jumped off docks and spent time on beaches and that's what kids do in the island. This really doesn't have a lot to do with learning to swim but I have to tell you one. I have two sons who were born on the same day but two years apart so every summer we had a big bash on Great Diamond and all their friends from town would come and relatives and spend the night and the kids would all want to jump off the dock. Some would swim on the beach and kayak and want to swim on the dock. We were down there with a bunch of 10 and 12 year olds they were two years apart and I was trying to be the chaperone and the ferry came in and I know the ferry well. I was a ferry captain at the time and I told, gave all the kids the rules. I said you step back you don't get near the edge of the dock when the ferry comes in there's a propeller turning you got to be really careful. So anyway the ferry came in people unloaded the captain started to take the line or the crew took the line in and the captain started to back up and one of the kids who's a good swimmer but decided he was going to jump in the water before the ferry left and he jumps off the end of the dock the boat starts backing towards him I'm yelling stop the boat stop the engines fortunately the captain saw it and stopped the boat but he swam around the dock not paying any attention at all to the fact that there was a boat and propeller turning probably within 20 feet from him and climbed up the ladder and acted like what was wrong but he was a good swimmer I'm not sure he could have done battle with a propeller but he was a good swimmer so just to say a little bit about I've spent a lot of time working on the water a lot of time working on Portland's waterfront swimming is learning to swim is important it's as you all know and some of you are very good swimmers know that swimming is something that's great for exercise it's something that I'm not telling you or anything you don't know it's a lifelong thing it's like you can play golf or tennis and swim I can't play basketball anymore I got too old but people can still swim at any age so it's very important I work on the water people who work on boats need to know how to swim I can tell you there are fishermen who don't know how to swim there are some I know who wish they had learned how to swim we have people who live in our community who aren't quite as fortunate as others who often live on the streets some of them spend an awful lot of time on the waterfront we've had incidents, not in the last few years but we have incidents in the recent probably five or six years where people have actually fallen in the water and haven't been able to swim and have perished because of it so as was mentioned we live in a city and we're on a peninsula I live over by Back Cove I can look out from my house down the street and see the water we have water around us it's very important that people know how to swim it's a safety issue for people who spend time on boats and spend time on beaches and spend time on wharves around Portland so it's a very important thing I must tell you though I'm an average swimmer I'll swim on a beach you won't find me on a diving board I don't mind saying that but I can swim and like I said I learned to swim out on one of the islands in Casco Bay so that's a pretty important thing I did jot down a couple of notes and I'm trying to make sure that I covered those things I do want to mention one thing that I haven't and I know you are raising money so that these programs can be put on but as a city counselor I can't help but mention the city's rec program and the staff that work in our rec program in our two schools community schools so I want to just mention them and how important those programs are I will say as Joe was talking about the history of Reiki and the community center community school being built I have had some experience in closing schools or recommending closing schools and being on a building committee for the East End school I've been on other building committees as well but we're very fortunate that we have the community school at Reiki and also out at Riverton with pools when we looked at building a new Jack the new East End school we looked at trying to make it as much of a community school as those two are they were very good models but when you look at the infrastructure costs and you look at the maintenance costs of trying to have a pool in more than those two schools it wasn't something that we could financially withstand so it's really important that our elected officials do what they can to make sure there's funding to maintain our schools to maintain Reiki and we really can't do all of that without the efforts of all of you raising money for these programs so kids can learn to swim and not just kids who go to Reiki but kids who may not go to Reiki but also live on the western part of the peninsula so with that I want to say thank you to all of you thanks for Rosanne for inviting me and remember how important it is for those who live in Portland who work on the waterfront who spend time on the bay who spend time on the islands that they learn how to swim at a young age so thank you very much we have another speaker this time our speaker is Holly Seliger she is the district 2 representative on the Portland school board grew up in Maine and is going to talk about learning to swim as a kid in Maine thanks a lot Rosanne glad I was asked to be a part of this thank you everyone for all your hard work this is a really classy event someone asked me if I'm a member of WENNA and I am although I need to pay my $5 membership fee I just remembered that so I need to pay my fee so don't let me know and I will give the $5 membership fee to WENNA really excited that my west end part on the district representative west end parkside and we have a public pool for people to use childhood like Nick said, childhood is the best time to learn how to swim and it's a skill that can save your life or save someone else's life and wouldn't it be amazing if every child in Maine could learn how to swim and judging by all the drawings up here as long as they stay up on the wall the kids really appreciate being able to swim and being able to take the lessons just a few facts about kids in Maine, child poverty is on the rise in Maine since 2008 according to the Maine Children's Alliance nearly 20% of children under 18 live in poverty in Maine and in Portland child poverty is over 25% so kids need activities to stay warm and active through the winter months and when a swimming program at the Reiki school ensures access to activities and it's an invaluable skill to learn how to swim like Roseanne said, I grew up in Maine I didn't grow up in Portland but I learned how to swim at about 5 years old I started taking swimming lessons and I really loved swimming and I wanted to join the swim team until I watched the Jaws Marathon with my dad on TV and I think it's in the third movie somehow the shark ends up in the local community pool and it was really scary to see as a kid so I still been pretty scared about a shark ending up in the pool not anymore but there were a few years where I did not want to swim because of that so I'm keeping my speech very brief but please help kids learn how to swim and don't let kids watch the Jaws movie marathon and they will enjoy the Reiki swimming pool very much, thank you Roseanne but right now I'd like to introduce the Stevens family and this is a family from the West End who has had the total Reiki swimming experience of what, three generations now? not quite, on the way well I guess we're presiding over the kind of close out and clean up here this is my grandson Stratton who has told me that he's not prepared to speak tonight even though he's the youngest swimmer in the family but who should say that's not true? oh that's true and he's not here so that's the youngest swimmer in the family, thank you Jane we have two young swimmers what's that? that's a microphone okay and this is son John Stratton and this is son Nate over here so I have Voluminous prepared remarks here so I'm less prepared than Joe and more prepared than Nick I think but both of our kids grew up at Reiki and although they didn't learn to swim there they learned to swim at the YW but before they were old enough to go to Reiki from the time they were in kindergarten until the time that they graduated from high school and that swimming was both as students at the school and also as members of the Portland Porpoise Swim Club and Sharon Power who was the coach of the Portland Swim Club for a good number of years mailed me some recollections of coaching at that pool which was a little bit challenging to coach competitive swimming in that pool because I think that when the pool was designed I don't think they thought that they were going to get an Olympic gold medalist out of that pool which they did with Ian Crocker but some of Sharon's remarks were that at that time and I haven't been in there recently there were no lines on the bottom of the pool and so the little kids who trained there when they went to a swim meet could see the lines on the bottom of the pool and they were all wiggly because of the waves and they wouldn't go in the water at the swim meet the other problem was that those of you who have swum in competitive pools know as a T at the end of the pool where you're supposed to start, initiate your flip turn and there were none of those at the Reiki pool and so Sharon used to put hockey pucks on the bottom of the pool so that she could teach the kids to do flip turns in the pool the other problem with the pool was and still is to follow to dive into so that she couldn't teach starts at the pool so those were all of the challenges the pool was fairly narrow so the lines were very close together and I can remember Nate and Ian Crocker swimming there and they would use the lines to pull themselves along when they were doing the butterfly or at least that's what their coach says the other thing that was nice about that pool was that particularly in this kind of weather they would try to make snowballs and so she remembers in this kind of weather when kids were standing shivering not wanting to get into the pool at 5.30 in the morning she would bring snowballs in with her and throw snowballs at the kids until they went in the water but despite all those problems that pool produced an Olympic gold medalist with Ian Crocker produced two Olympic trials qualifiers my son Nate and Ian Crocker five junior national qualifiers who are Ian and Nate my son John, Angie Chessie and Lindsay Hoffner so as Sharon said no matter what pool they want to compete in it was always easier to swim in than the Reiki pool but I think at this point I'm going to turn it over to John and Nate to say a little bit about their experience swimming there for probably close to 15 years I think I was there for the better part of 15 years the challenges of no lines on the bottom of the pool and I think Nate can attest to doing flip turns and getting ankles stuck in the gutters over there at the end of the pool I did a little quick calculation and I think I figured I swam about 3,500 hours in that pool and close to 10 million yards over the course of swim lessons and say about four or five years they're doing competitive swimming so it definitely helped me out and you know sent me on my way sent me to Miami in the winter we were having I kind of wish we were back there now and Nate went off to college as well but you know at the end of the day I could show up at any pool and know that it could definitely be a little bit worse but I'm very much thankful for that pool a lot of good times there a lot of pleasant times spent and though a difficult pool to swim in it definitely serves its purpose as a great pool to learn to swim in especially with the swim lessons that we had there at Reiki so you can definitely be thankful that we had it especially so close to the house when you have a 5 a.m. workout and getting out of bed at 4.50 to show up at 5 was pretty nice compared to some of our friends who were living in Cumberland and having to drive in to swim there but I think I'll turn it over to Nate now to share a few things Hello, Nate Stevens so as John said and my dad noted pretty much grew up at Reiki with swim lessons and open swim and flash parties and later swimming for the porpoises and countless and many many hours early morning late night which took me on to college at the University of Arizona which I'll tell a brief story of when I arrived there as a freshman in the first couple days that I was there and I was sitting down with a few of the guys trying to get to know the team and all of these guys coming from all over the world South Africa, London, France Mexico, Venezuela and other prestigious programs in the US and one of them had known Ian from I think a national team and he said to me, he said Nate, is it true you guys swim in like a really small pool? I said, well, yes it is and then I went on to describe Reiki as you know, let's be honest what it is, kind of a four lane cinder block warehouse and they just kind of all looked at me in disbelief that a product like Ian or any of the other successful swimmers could be successful from swimming in such a small pool and I think it just goes to show you that it really doesn't matter if you have 15 lanes and bleachers as long as you have water in a pool for the community and a community to embrace that pool so I think it's wonderful that this is happening here today to support the swim lessons and keep kids in the pool I have several friends that I grew up with that still to this age don't know how to swim and you know, having a family summer residence on Little Diamond Island I can attest to the importance of swimming so thank you very much for having this event today, thanks if people are interested in donating to the swimming lessons but can't make it to the auction today where can they go for more information about doing that so the West End Neighborhood Association has a website set up where you can make a donation through our PayPal account and the website is www.patreon.com