As Eatonville’s pool remains closed, locals say town spurned fundraising pitch

Children’s laughter coming from a daycare center next door cuts through the air as the water in Eatonville’s community pool glistens a sickly green in the August sun.

Weeds shoot up through the cracks in the concrete surrounding it and a padlocked chain link fence keeps swimmers away.

Eatonville’s town government closed the pool in March 2020 as businesses, government offices and schools shut down across the nation in an attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19. While most such facilities have long since reopened, Eatonville’s pool remains stagnant.

With residents eager for the pool’s restoration, a grassroots effort launched to raise the money needed to clean and repair it. But those involved say Eatonville’s new mayor, Angie Gardner, turned them aside in favor of a plan that could leave the pool closed for another year.

“The community is upset,” said Leviticus Henderson, who grew up in Eatonville and now raises his children there. “There is an uproar. … We’re forgetting about our children. The pool is a staple for our children.”

Gardner did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Carolyn Atkins, another longtime resident, said her children — now adults in their 40s and 50s — learned to swim in that pool. Her granddaughter, who recently graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, used to spend summers working there as a lifeguard.

Atkins said the pool helped make the town feel complete.

“Having it all in your own neighborhood, not having to leave… your neighborhood, it’s kind of like having a city in a city,” Atkins said. “You don’t have to go outside the town of Eatonville for anything because everything was right there for you — the stores, the schools and the pool. Plus the people knew each other’s families in the community. It was a way for the kids to have safe fun in their own neighborhood, in walking distance.”

Even more importantly, Atkins added, swim lessons were taught at the pool.

When it’s so common for Black children to grow up never learning to swim, water safety lessons in Eatonville, considered the nation’s oldest African American-incorporated municipality where roughly three in four residents are Black, could save lives, she said.

If Gardner had approved the fundraising pitch, children in Eatonville could have spent July 4 swimming, said Steve Martin, the Maitland man who brought the plan to her office.

Martin has watched the pool deteriorate over the past 18 months he spent volunteering at the Boy & Girls Club of America location in Eatonville. In April, he brought in a pool builder to estimate the cost of repairs and once he had the number — about $63,000 — he started going to his friends, mostly successful businessmen and women in Maitland and Winter Park who had money to donate to the project.

“They all want to give money,” Martin said. “I can raise $63,000 very easily.”

But there was a catch.

The donors “don’t want to run that money through Eatonville because of its history,” Martin said, referencing decades of scandals over election fraud, withholding public information, conflicting bank records and accusations of theft that have plagued multiple administrations.

Martin wanted to set up a separate account specifically for the pool project. He even got as far as speaking directly with Gardner about his plan but when he mentioned that a condition would be that the funds be handled by a third-party servicing company, everything fell apart, he said.

Martin said no one in Gardner’s office ever explained why his plan was not approved or what he could do to make it happen. He said he even started speaking with officials in Maitland and Winter Park to float the idea that one of those cities could take over maintenance costs if that became a concern after the repairs were made. Still, nothing happened.

Gardner, he said, told him the town “[has] an audit team now and it’s OK to run that money through,” Martin said. “And that’s where the conversation ends.”

On Monday, Cathy Williams, Eatonville’s Chief Administrative Officer, said, “The Town of Eatonville is aggressively working on getting the community pool functioning and up and running within the next several months for the kids to enjoy the next summer, as this is a big part of the community.”

She added that the town “is looking at several funding sources, however, the fundraising is not a part of these efforts. We are working to receive quotes from various pool companies, and as soon as we have received those quotes, we will move forward with getting the community pool up and running.”

When asked why the town was not interested in Martin’s plan, Williams could not say.

“I’m not sure, he spoke directly with Mayor Gardner regarding this funding,” Williams said. “You will need to ask her why she chose not to use this option.”

dstennett@orlandosentinel.com