Boulder’s oldest public pool · est. 1922
100 years old.
Don’t drain it.
Boulder is removing Spruce Pool’s operating funding from the 2027 budget, in the same years it has committed $304M+ to a new office campus. The pool closes in 2028 unless council acts.
— neighbors have signed — emails sent to council
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Oct 1
Budget hearing
in 30 days
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Oct 15
Adoption vote
in 44 days
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Nov 3
Election Day
in 63 days
The numbers
Every figure below is sourced. Nothing here is an estimate we made up.
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$304M+
committed to the Alpine-Balsam campus
$40M land + $16M demolition + $140M campus + $108M interest.
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2×
as many 90°+ days as the 1990s
46 a year this decade against 19 a year in the 1990s.
Boulder is getting hotter. It is closing pools.
Days at or above 90°F, every year since 1990. The dashed lines are decade averages.
2026 is counted through Aug 29. Boulder also set a record for 95°+ days in 2026 and tied its all-time record for 100°+ days.
Boulder's record year is 1952, at 60 days; the 1950s were hot too. The point here is the direction since 1990, and the records set in 2026.
Show this chart as a table
| Year | Days at or above 90°F |
|---|---|
| 1990 | 22 |
| 1991 | 15 |
| 1992 | 6 |
| 1993 | 12 |
| 1994 | 30 |
| 1995 | 34 |
| 1996 | 20 |
| 1997 | 9 |
| 1998 | 28 |
| 1999 | 16 |
| 2000 | 51 |
| 2001 | 41 |
| 2002 | 53 |
| 2003 | 41 |
| 2004 | 14 |
| 2005 | 32 |
| 2006 | 44 |
| 2007 | 45 |
| 2008 | 33 |
| 2009 | 13 |
| 2010 | 33 |
| 2011 | 40 |
| 2012 | 59 |
| 2013 | 43 |
| 2014 | 18 |
| 2015 | 35 |
| 2016 | 46 |
| 2017 | 33 |
| 2018 | 46 |
| 2019 | 40 |
| 2020 | 51 |
| 2021 | 50 |
| 2022 | 52 |
| 2023 | 33 |
| 2024 | 44 |
| 2025 | 39 |
| 2026 (partial) | 50 |
Source: Extreme Weather Watch
A hundred years, and then a footnote
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1922
Boulder's first public pool opens
The Hygienic Swimming Pool, at 21st and Spruce, warmed by waste heat from the ice plant next door.
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2025
Closed two weeks early
Spruce shuts on Aug 17 instead of Labor Day, saving roughly $20,000. The city says it will survey users. The surveys are never posted.
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2026
Weekdays cut, in the hottest summer on record
Weekday operations end Aug 11. Weekends only through Labor Day — in a year that set Boulder's record for 95°+ days.
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2027
Ongoing funding removed
The recommended budget strips the ongoing line item and keeps the pool open on one-time money. Scott Carpenter's hours are cut too.
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2028
Closed
"Funding will not be available for 2028." Unless council acts by October 15.
Who can actually walk to a pool
Spruce is the pool you can reach on foot from Whittier, Goss-Grove, downtown and the Hill. The rings are a 10-, 15- and 20-minute walk. Everything else on the map is a drive.
The pools on this map
- Spruce Pool — 2102 Spruce St, Boulder, CO 80302. Boulder's oldest public pool, open since 1922.
- Scott Carpenter Pool — 1505 30th St, Boulder, CO 80303. Regional outdoor complex. Shoulder-season hours also cut in the 2027 budget.
- North Boulder Recreation Center — 3170 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80304.
- East Boulder Community Center — 5660 Sioux Dr, Boulder, CO 80303.
- South Boulder Recreation Center — 1360 Gillaspie Dr, Boulder, CO 80305. Facing replacement.
- Boulder Reservoir swim beach — 5565 51st St, Boulder, CO 80301.
- Whittier Elementary — 2008 Pine St, Boulder, CO 80302. Two blocks from Spruce.
Rings are straight-line radii at an unhurried walking pace, not street routing. A real walk is longer, which understates the point rather than overstating it. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Seven reasons to keep it open
Pick the one you believe most. That is the one to put in your own words when you write to council.
It is $138,000. The city budget is $552.6 million.
Spruce Pool costs 0.025% of the city budget — about $1.30 per resident per year. In the same years, Boulder has committed more than $304 million to the Alpine-Balsam campus and put a $400 million recreation bond on the ballot that will cost $650 million to repay. This is not a scarcity problem. It is a priorities problem, and $138,000 is a rounding error inside it.
Boulder gets twice the 90-degree days it did in the 1990s.
Boulder averaged 19 days at or above 90°F in the 1990s. This decade it averages 46. In 2026 the city set a record for 95°+ days and tied its all-time record for 100°+ days. Heat is the deadliest weather hazard in the United States, and a public pool is the most accessible cooling infrastructure a city has. This budget cuts hours at both outdoor pools and defunds one of them.
2× as many 90°+ days as the 1990s
When public pools close, the people who can buy their way out do.
Families with money move to backyard pools and private clubs. Everyone else simply loses the summer. Swimming ability in the United States tracks income and access, a pattern the American Academy of Pediatrics documented again in 2026. Spruce is the pool you can walk to from Whittier, Goss-Grove, downtown and the Hill — the pool for renters, students, seniors and toddlers. Free rec-center access means nothing if the accessible facility is gone.
One municipal pool is the efficient way to cool a neighborhood.
A single public pool serves tens of thousands of visits a season on one filtration system, one heater and one footprint. What replaces it is worse for the environment on every axis: more backyard pools, more water, more chemicals, more energy, more pavement, and more driving across town to get to the pools that remain.
Nobody asked the neighborhood.
The end of a 100-year-old public pool arrived as a parenthetical in a budget document. There was no public process, no survey published, no alternatives presented. The city's own model for who pays says facilities that benefit the whole community are tax-funded, not fee-funded. Spruce is exactly that kind of facility, and the decision to close it deserved exactly the process it did not get.
Deferred maintenance is a choice, not a diagnosis.
The case for the recreation bond is that deferred maintenance only gets more expensive. That argument is right. It also describes what has been done to Spruce: starve a 100-year-old facility, then close it as "beyond its useful life." That is the exact pattern the bond says it will end. Put Spruce in the capital plan now and the pattern breaks.
It has been open since 1922.
Spruce opened as Boulder's first public pool, heated by waste steam from the ice plant next door. It stayed open through the Depression, through a world war, and through a pandemic. Cities protect the things that have been theirs for a hundred years. Very few American towns still have a working public pool from 1922. Boulder does, for another year.
What the city will say, and what we say
These are the answers you will hear. None of them are unreasonable. None of them settle it either.
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They say
“Scott Carpenter Pool is only 1.3 miles away.”
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We say
Scott Carpenter is a regional complex — slides, swim teams, crowds — and its shoulder-season hours are being cut in the same budget. Spruce is the quiet neighborhood pool. And 1.3 miles is a drive, not a walk, when you are six years old or eighty.
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They say
“We have exhausted the options.”
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We say
Four funding sources in this same budget could cover $138,000. Which of them were evaluated for Spruce specifically, and what did the analysis say? We have asked for the answer under the Colorado Open Records Act.
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They say
“Spruce is underutilized.”
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We say
Then show the attendance data, and the cost per visit at every city facility next to it. You cannot cut the hours, close two weeks early, skip the promised survey, and then cite low usage as the reason to close.
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They say
“Minimum wage is up and chemical costs rose 30%.”
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We say
True — and true for every pool the city runs. Rising costs explain why the budget is tight. They do not explain why this particular facility was chosen to absorb them.
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They say
“The budget is balanced. Reopening it unravels everything.”
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We say
$138,000 is about 2% of the $6.3 million gap the city is closing. Council amended the bond ballot language in August. It can amend a footnote in October.
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They say
“One-time money keeps it open through 2027. We can decide later.”
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We say
Base budgets compound. Once the ongoing line is gone, restoring it in 2028 is scored as a new expense competing against everything else, not as continuing something that already exists. Later is how this ends.
What we are asking council to do
Three specific things, before the budget is adopted on October 15.
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1
Restore the ongoing operating funding.
Put Spruce Pool's roughly $138,000 back into the 2027 base budget as ongoing money, not one-time money — so a 2028 closure is not baked in before anyone votes on it.
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2
Put Spruce in the capital plan.
Add Spruce Pool to the 2027–2032 capital improvement program: fund a facility condition assessment in 2027, and a capital refresh from the Permanent Parks & Recreation Fund, which is capital-only by charter.
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3
No closure by footnote.
Direct staff and the Parks & Recreation Advisory Board to bring council a sustainability plan for Spruce — with attendance data, cost per visit and alternatives — before any closure decision is made.
And here is where the money can come from
“We have exhausted the options” is the answer we expect. These four are in this budget.
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Climate Tax
Already used for urban forestry, which frees other funds for underfunded recreation operations. Heat is a climate impact, and a public pool is heat-resilience infrastructure.
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Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Tax
Redirected to health and wellbeing programs. Low-cost access to swimming is squarely within that purpose.
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Permanent Parks & Recreation Fund
Capital-only under the city charter — so it cannot pay for operations, but it can pay for the facility condition assessment and the capital refresh.
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Earned and partner revenue
Lane rentals to Boulder Aquatic Masters and youth teams, a Friends of Spruce fund through the PLAY Boulder Foundation, and a dedicated Spruce season pass.
Where council stands
We asked all of them one question: will you vote to restore Spruce Pool’s ongoing funding? Nobody has answered yet. When they do, their words go here.
- Aaron Brockett · No response
- Tara Winer · No response
- Taishya Adams · No response
- Tina Marquis · No response
- Ryan Schuchard · No response
- Matt Benjamin · No response
- Rob Kaplan · No response
- Nicole Speer · No response
Sign the petition
Addressed to Boulder City Council before the October 15 budget vote. We publish only the total and a neighborhood breakdown — never your name or email.
Who is behind this
- Save Spruce Pool
- Boulder Aquatic Masters (BAM)
- Whittier & Spruce Street neighbors
Want your group listed? Email us and we will add you.