Pool Parties: Threat or Menace?

In the distant past, my neighborhood allowed for "pool parties": a resident could reserve a time / day for a party of N people - quite often used for birthday parties and so on. I believe there was a small fee for additional lifeguard coverage and clean-up, plus various other misc rules that are lost in the mists of time, like: no-one could book exclusive use of the pool{1}. I was never involved with any of it, and with the advent of COVID a previous administration decided to simply ban pool parties altogether.

But in the process of getting the pool ready for summer in these past weeks, I've been discovering that there's a lot of interest by neighborhood Moms in bringing pool parties back{2}. Our Board is going to discuss it{3}.

Any thoughts / wisdom / stories from the Group Mind?

{1} Which is not exactly a motivation for a person to go to the effort of scheduling an official pool party, if ya ask me.

{2} Yesterday Mr. President and I went up to the pool to check on how the new lifeguards were doing, and discovered a neighborhood Mom who was setting up for a "school's out" party for 20+ kids. She claimed she'd asked the mgmt company about it (but admitted that she got no response). In short, there's Mr. President and myself, a couple of new lifeguards, Mom, 5 or 6 of Mom's friends, and 12 or 15 kids who have been promised a pool party. But we told them it was against the rules and they were okay with it. NOT. I'm a bit younger and can run a bit faster than Mr. President, so I got away without injury, but the kids took Mr. President down and I heard his pitiful cries fading as I ran away ... sorry, I'm lying again. In all truth & seriousness: I can be a huge asshole, but there's no way this was going to end other than "well, Mr. President, given that it's the last day of school, I think we can make an exception, and perhaps the Board needs to reconsider pool parties ..." and in truth, after all of the work I put into it all, I would have been disappointed if there *weren't* a big group of kids at the pool yesterday. But we need to put some thought into this matter.

{3} We have a key-fob system for gate access. We've had a lot of issues with non-residents tailgating in - we're hoping that the re-introduction of lifeguards will help to curtail some of that.

Again, thank you.

Bill

Also, if your rules require that pool guests be accompanied by an owner, it's not possible for a single owner to meaningfully "accompany" a horde of kids. The owner's responsibility would be offloaded onto the association. That rules out the pool parties right there unless the party involves only one or two guests.

We had a request for a pool party a few weeks. I spoke with our insurance broker. He says there is not any increased liability and that our current insurance is adequate. You should check with your broker and may find out the same thing.

We ended up saying that the person could have a pool party (our documents do not limit the number of guests that an owner can bring to the pool - that needs to be changed) but we required a $200 security deposit to cover any damage or extra cleanup that might be needed.

The didn't end up having the party. We are going to have to change our documents and make a decision one way or the other as our community is becoming younger and more people want parties.