Public Comment

Berkeley’s Warm Pool is important and magical. It is important to everyone who goes there to partake of the healing waters. 

It is magical because of the people who go there to heal themselves and one another. 

This is a very special place. It has power in its magic and importance. 

Power comes when people form a community without hidden agendas. Any community based solely on the happiness and well-being of its members is important. 

Power comes from people coming together as a healing force. Those people have magic. 

I have a strong attachment to my friends at the Berkeley Warm Pool. They are loved and loving. These important and magical people are kind, generous and very healing human forces. I am biased where they are concerned. 

If I wrote only about specific individuals, I would get too sentimental. That might dilute the magic and importance I hope to conjure up here. 

Therefore, I will write about the sad political aspect of the battle to save Berkeley’s Warm Pool. 

If you close the warm pool, the people who benefit from it so much will have nowhere to go. 

The warm pool provides a safe haven for the incapacitated and aging who are frequently abused and left behind by our ignorant youth-oriented society. 

Also, I ask that you please vigilantly remember that these people are responsible for your jobs. If you are in a public service position, these are the people you serve. 

As a result of the recent elections this nation is, I pray, moving toward true humanitarian ideals. The Larry Ellisons, Jeffrey Skillings and Tom DeLays of the world are not going to get away with just a symbolic slap on the wrist anymore. 

The Warm Pool is not a nation-wide issue like the nightmare of Iraq. It is not a major issue for the State of California. 

It is an issue for the City of Berkeley. Therefore, it is your issue. 

Whether we like it or not, we are engaged now in the real battle to regain America’s good standing in the world community. We know that when we hurt someone very deeply, we can only encourage them to have faith in us again by displaying honesty and integrity. 

The Warm Pool community would like to know that you are honest. They would like to believe that those individuals they have entrusted with guiding and protecting Berkeley have real integrity. 

Let those noble qualities guide you when you make your decision regarding Berkeley’s Warm Pool. 

Maybe you will only get to do one good thing in your political career. We have to do those good things step by step. 

Good deeds done in our cities, then our states and finally for the healing of our nation; with this right action we can recapture the magical qualities of our important country. 

Please make that one good political thing you do saving Berkeley’s Warm Pool. 

Robert Strom is a Berkeley resident.