BOS:311

Porholes

I'm writing to vehemently complain about the city's handling of the Flaherty swim team. The team has been operating as a competitive team for 33 years. Parents were suddenly told mid-season and with no time to plan and extremely limited information that the team will no longer exist after April. We are extremely frustrated at the lack of community engagement and planning that is essentially resulting in dismantling the team. We have many swimmers passionate about swim because of this coach and community. Most cannot afford the thousands of dollars required to join clubs. This is why swimming is a mostly wealthy, white sport. The dolphins makes competitive swim accessible. The decision to move our coach who has been with us for 20 years is going to directly destroy the team. The city gave no thought at all to the negative impact on our 87 youth swimmers. This is extremely poor management and bad community relations. Families are angry and we deserve a real solution. Please reach out to the community and fix this. Here is the mayor's statement: "Mayor Wu’s administration is committed to nurturing a robust and resilient youth sports ecosystem that develops youth, creates community, and enhances quality of life. We envision a future where Boston youth have access to sports irrespective of race, ethnicity, gender, ability or zip code. We envision a Boston where youth sports instill community pride and facilitate healthy cross-city connections." We already have this in place at Flaherty. Public statements that sound nice but private actions that go directly against them erode trust. This is not the way to run a city.

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