There will be no swimming at Breslin Pool in 2009, but a citizens group is not giving up on the fight to save the Irish Hill landmark.

Now the organization trying to get the pool open is blaming Metro Goverment for withholding funds that it believes should be made available to get the pool open this year.

Briefly, the problems began when Metro Government included Breslin among the five city pools slated for closing due to budget problems last year. That prompted neighbors to form SUP (Save Urban Pools) and fight the closure.  A year ago, the Metro Council set aside $600,000 for improvements to “aquatic facilities” there, but in Metro Parks’ definition that has come to mean spraygrounds, not swimming pools.

The SUP group wants no part of a sprayground, as it expressed in a  meeting last September with Metro Parks. It wanted, instead, to operate the pool on its own, but it needed to get an agreement with Metro Parks.

Led by bar owner Tom O’Shea, SUP began raising money for Breslin. In January, O’Shea offered $75,000 and said he would operate the pool for a year, and said he had made arrangements with local businesses to donate improvements like furniture and paint. There was plenty of time to open by Memorial Day this year.

But according to SUP’s Cindy Brown-Kinloch, at a February meeting with Councilwoman Tina Ward-Pugh and Metro Parks, she learned the money set aside last year was no longer available, that money couldn’t be given to a third-party operator like O’Shea (though she quickly pointed out that Cordish is a third party that gets loads of money from the city), and that O’Shea was now required to make a minimum three-year commitment before anybody gets wet.

So SUP is left high and dry for the second year, and has sent a June 11 letter to all Metro Council members complaining about the situation, and asking for the money to be made available for 2010. If not for the neigbhorhood opposition, it’s likely Breslin would have already had a sprayground paid for by the city.

Ward-Pugh responded today with a letter to Brown-Kinloch, saying she continues to support a sprayground because it would be open longer and serve more people. She wrote that a multi-year commitment was needed before she’d commit capital funds to the pool project.

She added that in its last year of operation, Breslin only served about 19 kids a day, and contrasted that with numbers from the new Iroquois sprayground, which is getting 576 per day.

Of course, you can’t swim in it, which is SUP’s point.

Also working against SUP is a recent poll of Metro Council members, who ranked pools 44th, dead last, on a list of “mission critical” priorities. Ward-Pugh wrote that teaching kids to swim is not a government priority.

She’s right about that. And if anyone’s ever going to resurrect a pool at Breslin, it’s going to take a pile of private money.