It appears that all of Baltimore's pools will be able to reopen following a deluge of private donations, city officials said Thursday.
More than $582,000 in gifts from corporations and individual donors have enabled the larger park pools to reopen after they were closed Monday as part of budget cuts, officials said. A little more than $100,000 still is needed to open the 13 smaller pools.
The outpouring led City Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young to cancel an emergency meeting planned for Friday to pressure Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake into tapping the city's rainy day fund to keep the pools open until Labor Day.
Grant Capital Management pledged $90,000 to keep the Druid Hill Park pool open and the T. Rowe Price Foundation gave $117,000. An anonymous donor contributed $300,000 and more than $75,000 in smaller gifts arrived through the foundation.
Officials had truncated the swim season as part of $70 million in cuts to help close a $121 million gap in the city's budget.
As city officials grappled with the large shortfall, they had initially proposed closing half of the pools and opening the remainder for six weeks, three weeks shorter than usual.
But after the city council passed a $50 million package of new taxes and fees proposed by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the allocation for the aquatics program was doubled to about $1.4 million, enabling all of the pools to open for six weeks.
julie.scharper@baltsun.com