As the Fox Valley Park District continues to hire lifeguards, district officials this week guaranteed the three main Aurora aquatic facilities will be open this summer.
“All three will be open without question,” said Fox Valley Park District Executive Director Jim Pilmer to members of the district’s board of trustees this week.
Last year, with the Fox Valley Park District looking to open the facilities for the first time after the coronavirus pandemic lockdown, officials found it impossible to hire enough lifeguards to open both the Phillips Park Family Aquatic Center on the East Side and Splash Country Aquatic Center on the West Side.
Park officials chose Splash Country because it could accommodate 500 more people, and does not have a deep water section like Phillips Park, which requires lifeguards with additional certification.
There is also an indoor water park at Vaughan Athletic Center in Aurora.
Pilmer said this week that park officials started hiring lifeguards for 2023 as far back as September 2022, including finding ways to keep the lifeguards they already have.
Hiring is more difficult now than it used to be. Lifeguards need to be certified, and the Fox Valley Park District recruits people and pays for them to go through the certification.
“Not everyone makes it,” Pilmer said. “It’s not just the kid next door looking for a job anymore.”
Park officials began a campaign last December to recruit college students when they were home during the holidays. Officials hold and attend job fairs, and recruit at as many high schools as possible, Pilmer said.
He added that he approached the Reserve Officer Training Corps, or ROTC, unit at East Aurora High School looking for recruits. Any ROTC member who looks to go further after school and ends up training at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in North Chicago must know how to swim to graduate from there.
Pilmer said he has offered to have the Fox Valley Park District teach swimming to each ROTC member going to Great Lakes, if they will, in return, serve as a lifeguard in the Aurora facilities. Lifeguards are paid $16 an hour.
At this week’s Fox Valley Park District board meeting, Jaime Ijams, recreation director, said the district has 54% of its lifeguards hired, and has another 43 signed up to go through the training.
“We know people want the outdoor pools,” Pilmer said. “We need to figure out how to operate them for 80 days.”
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