Why are your children my responsbility?

For a country purportedly founded on “rugged individualism,” I’ve never understood our pervasive “attractive nuisance” laws and I never will. The legal theory is if a homeowner installs a swimming pool, some nifty playground equipment, or another tempting device, it’s their responsibility to keep the neighborhood miscreants out. And the legally proscribed methods to bar said brats are laughable at best.

But that didn’t stop the St. Charles city council from making it a lot more expensive for residents to own a pool for no measurable benefit.

Incited by persistently nosy nanny-stater neighbor Kimberly Basich, in addition to requiring a safety cover, now St. Charles pool owners will be forced to erect a four-foot fence with locking gate around said contrivance. It used to be an either-or proposition.

For reference purposes, despite my contention that pools, like neighbors, are a real pain in the ass, my wife outvoted me one to one and we own one. Since we already had a backyard fence with a locking gate, we were good. But my wife added a pool deck with a locking gate for good measure. We don’t have a safety cover, however, because it would interfere with the solar variety. Since most above ground pools don’t have heaters, a solar cover does an amazing job of trapping the sun’s heat and extending the mercurial Chicago area pool season by as much as two months.

Basich’s first city council theory was that drowning is the leading cause of death for one- to four-year-olds, a questionable and misleading contention at best. It’s certainly a leading factor, but half of the credible websites out there claim that accidents of all kinds are actually the culprit.

Then, without citing any specific circumstances, Basich further bolstered her fence plus safety cover “case” by retelling the “story” of a 3-year-old who drowned in an adjacent neighborhood claiming it was “almost 100% preventable.” 

First, I fully believe that tale is apocryphal because, despite a thorough Web search, I can’t find a single news story on a three-year-old drowning in any St. Charles pool. Meanwhile, there’s plenty of coverage of every other area pool drowning as well as dozens of reports on the tragic 2014 death of a four-year-old who drowned at the St. Charles County club. And that pool had a lifeguard!

But let’s say that death isn’t just another urban myth. Odds are that neither a fence nor a safety cover would’ve made a scintilla of difference. Why? Because 65 percent – a full two thirds – of 1-to 4- year-old pool drowning deaths take place in the family pool with an additional 33 percent occurring at relative’s or family friend’s pool. In both cases, children have unfettered access to the pool.

That means just two percent of child pool drowning deaths can be attributed to a random child trespassing onto a random property. With the annual U. S. toddler pool drowning death toll sitting at 350 per year, that means we’re talking about seven deaths a year, or just two percent. While any death is tragic and we should take all reasonable preventive measures, if municipalities start legislating on the basis of seven nationwide deaths a year we’re all gonna go broke.

Not only that, but I would counter Ms. Basich’s “almost 100 percent preventable” hypothesis with the stark reality that the only 100 percent solution is the appropriate supervision, and no one’s ever been able to legislate that into existence.

C’mon! We all know what really happens. Family, neighbors, and friends get together for a ubiquitous summer pool party, and per our real national pastime, the adults get progressively more drunk. That’s about the time when their already limited supervisory skills plummet into the crapper and an unfortunate child dies as a result of their negligence. So, why are city councils putting the fiscal and neighborhood child oversight onus on a homeowner that simply wants to enjoy a pool?

And let’s not forget that there’s a market for swimming pools, too.

Remember back in 1991 when Mr. No New Taxes, George H.W. Bush, put a 10 percent luxury tax on yachts? He figured that if you could afford the boat then you could afford the tax, but that wasn’t the case. There was a market for those watercraft and that tax put them out of reach, even for rich folks, resulting in 25,000 layoffs and a decrease in national revenue. The levy was so ill-advised that it was repealed in 1993, but the damage was already done.

It’s the same thing with backyard pools.

The average above-ground variety costs $3,500 with an additional $2,000-$3,000 in labor costs. But when you’re forced to shell out $4,000 for a small gated deck, or an $8,000 for a full backyard fence, you’ve doubled the cost, putting it out of reach for many families and destroying the local pool market. On the other hand, an above-ground safety cover is a mere $100 and they work far better than a fence.

And oddly enough the St. Charles ordinance only covers pools with at least two feet of water while a toddler can drown in an inch of H2O.

But since the vast majority of alderpeople love feelgood efforts while desperately doing their best to avoid the least bit of basic due diligence, we get stupid laws based on seven U.S. deaths a year. Ms. Basich claimed she embarked upon her fence crusade because a neighbor was putting in a pool. All I can say is, thank God I don’t live anywhere near her.

But here’s what really frosts my flakes, why am I responsible for your children? While I certainly wouldn’t set traps out for them (on my better days), why is a pool considered to be an “attractive nuisance?” Why is it considered a nuisance at all?

Our current batch of south Fisher Farms neighbors are more than reasonable in this regard, but the original louts firmly believed that supervising children was an option. So, not only did the rest of the neighborhood have to put up with their ill-mannered progeny’s inevitable crap, but then we have to spend thousands of dollars to keep them safe because their parents don’t give a flying flip? And we’re talking about an event that’s exponentially rarer than being struck by lightning.

Great job St. Charles city council!