Even while snow falls outside and cold temperatures abound, parks and recreation departments in Butler County are already looking ahead to the upcoming summer season.

Because the summer of 2021 was marked by lifeguard staff shortages, many pools are starting early and reaching out to prospective new lifeguards for the 2022 summer opening months.

“They have to start now in order to be prepared for when the weather changes,” Butler County Tourism & Convention Bureau president Jack Cohen said. “Now that COVID is backing away, more people are going to want to be outside. As that happens, they’re going to need more people to help.”

At Alameda Waterpark, parks and recreation director Lance Welliver said preparations for the summer season started even earlier than this month.

“We start at the beginning of the year, usually in January, and kind of push it through until we open up,” he said. “We’ve reached out to all the universities and high schools, and done different advertisements to try and recruit new lifeguards.”

Alameda Waterpark had to change its operating hours last year due to lifeguard shortages, he explained.

“Last year, we were closed Mondays and Tuesdays, and we reduced our hours on Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday by two hours. Friday and Saturday were normal hours,” he said. “We had lower numbers in total guards, and also had a lot of younger staff members too, which in turn requires certain breaks or limited working hours for certain ages.”

Welliver said that last year’s group of lifeguards did “a wonderful job” despite shortages. The group numbered in the low 20s, but in an ideal year Welliver aims to hire 25 to 30 lifeguards.

“It would be helpful to be able to open up like we have in the past for a full schedule,” he said. “We started an incentive program as well for them. We’re at $10 an hour, but if they work so many hours, they'll get additional compensation.”

The water park offers an additional $500 for working more than 250 hours, along with other bonuses for teaching swim lessons, running lane line rentals and recruiting other lifeguards.

The park will also reimburse lifeguards $200 for their certifications.

“It would be great if they had it prior to coming here, but if they don’t have it we’d be happy to train them,” Welliver said. “We start at age 15, and if they need their certifications we would be happy to put them through the course.”

In Cranberry Township, parks and recreation director Pete Geis said preparations for seasonal work take place all year long.

“To a lot of people, it’s just entering their minds, but we’ve been working on this since our season ended last year,” Geis said.

The Cranberry Township Waterpark staffs upwards of 60 lifeguards during a regular season at hourly rates beginning at $11 an hour, and reimburses lifeguards $150 for their training.

“It’s a constant ebb and flow of a process for us to get all of our programs working because we have high expectations for our programs,” Geis said. “We’re always sending messages out, we’re sending holiday cards to keep us relevant and on all the seasonal employees' minds.”

Other factors beyond lifeguard availability may affect the waterpark this year, he added.

“The economy is a challenge — gas is getting more expensive, and people are trying to decide whether it is more economical to stay home or go to work,” Geis said. “It’s gotten so extremely competitive with the market here, and so it’s about trying to stay competitive with everybody else.”

Seven Fields borough manager Tom Smith explained that weekends leading up to the summer season fill up fast.

“Normally in March, we would have been hiring the first round of lifeguards,” he said. “Normally, they would be returning lifeguards. In April, you’ll have some stragglers. We have our pre-pool-pass sale for two weekends in April, and guards have to get certified. That’s a weekend or two weekends that they have to find time to fit into their schedule. Then you have the Easter holiday, plus school or college.”

Seven Fields increased its hourly rate to $11.50 an hour, but has “not had any luck” finding applicants yet. Smith said the borough council would consider increasing the hourly rate to $15 an hour at a meeting this upcoming Monday. The pool also reimburses lifeguards for their certifications.

“We are competing with McDonalds, Chik-fil-a, Giant Eagle and Dick’s Sporting Goods,” he said.

Last summer, the Seven Fields Town Park Pool had only six lifeguards, not all of whom could work full time.

“These are teenagers oftentimes, or college-age students, and they don’t want to work 40 hours a week,” Smith explained. “They have vacations, band camp or football practice or soccer. Their hours and working availability is limited. It really creates an array of issues, and then you have people calling and saying, ‘I bought a pool pass and I’m not getting my money’s worth.’”

Smith hopes that this year the pool can avoid shortages and difficulties, and have a more normal operating season. He is concerned that inflation on prices of necessities such as food and chlorine may pose an additional problem.

“We’re doing everything we can to keep that pool open,” he said. “I want normal operations. That’s what we’re looking to do this year.”