City Rep. Beto O’Rourke did what politicians rarely do Tuesday, admitting that he made a mistake in pushing through a poorly thought-out ordinance on swimming pools and fencing in April that needed to be thrown out.
“At worst, it was a pretty bad ordinance,” he said.
He initially proposed that the council rescind the new ordinance, reinstate the previous pool rules the council put in place in 2003 and then come back Sept. 1 with a new and improved version of the April measure.
But after further discussion and some criticism of the city for trying to “legislate personal responsibility” by imposing stronger safety standards, O’Rourke said he would rather drop the requirement that a new ordinance be readied for adoption by Sept. 1.
The motion to repeal the April 1 measure came from city Rep. Melina Castro and was unanimously approved.
Work on a new ordinance will continue at the council committee and city staff levels without a deadline for bringing it to the full council for action.
Several people addressed the council on behalf of the real estate community to express concerns about the April 1 measure, which would increase housing costs and impose requirements on homeowners that they erect new fences around existing swimming pools and raise the height of the rock walls around their back yards from the standard four-feet high to five.
“We feel the question should be more pool safety than pool legislation,” said Doug Hamilton.
Dan Olivas, president of the El Paso Association of Realtors, said, “I think you have demonstrated a great service to the community by being willing to reconsider this.”
Ken G
July 9, 2008
I don't have a pool or kids but I know physical barriers can always be defeated. Hard to legislate parental responsibility.
F Ponce
July 9, 2008
Beto, thank you for thinking this through. I hope you read this. I have a pool, and although I do have a steel fence surrounding my pool with a self closing latch, nothing will take the place of responsibility. Even one death is one too many, but it all comes back to responsible parenting and responsible homeowners. The simple thing would be to make sure that public service announcements are provided to the public and that new pools have at least a 4 foot barrier with a self closing latch. Existing pools should be grandfathered in order to be fair.
Ricko
July 12, 2008
When I look into the eyes of our child, I know that without a second's pause that I would not trade that child for every red cent on earth. I could not trade any person's life for all the money in the world. Human life is precious beyond riches.
However, what gives any city council the license to impose a major cost on the citizenry without even the hint of adequate expert advice
on the effectivity of the proposed solution? What were they thinking? Answer: they were not thinking.
It seems to me that we have an abundance of Goody-Two-Shoes (in and out of politics) who go through life without a hint of intelligent consideration in resolving problems. About 20 years ago we saw a big movement to force parents to provide car seats for infant air travel on the premise that it was a solid safety measure. The GTSes lacked the forethought that a) when airplanes crash, noone survives, and b) more parents would opt to drive rather than fly if faced with purchasing additional airline seats, thereby INCREASING mortality. Just one example of an endless supply of thoughtless decisions which have a high potential to make matters worse, not better (and always at some one else's expense I might add).
We probably do need to take a well considered look at our building codes to see if there is any way to improve pool safety both for new construction, new installation, and retroactive work. As one responder mentioned, high walls can be scaled... so do we need higher walls (how high is effective?) or electronic monitoring and alarming, or some thoughtful package that really works? For me it is the latter.