Lifeguard shortage

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Skarke’s main job is to make sure pools across the county are staffed.

He said the management team at the county Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Services did a good job coming up with a plan to open pools, but said they were basically working with skeleton crews, meaning he had to get creative with staffing at times.

He said the management team began looking at what they could do to get more lifeguards trained to fill the gap. The county decided to offer the training for free, saving potential lifeguard candidates anywhere from $250 to $350 depending on where they are trained.

“If we can offer this top-notch training for free, we will eat it, yes, but it will completely pay off in time because we will have a pool of lifeguards to choose from,” he said.

The county began offering free training in November and is open to anyone meeting the age requirement regardless of whether they live in Loudoun.

“Loudoun County has been very fortunate that through the pandemic and the first little bit after. We haven’t been affected by the [lifeguard] shortages—well, the public hasn’t seen us be affected because behind the scenes Skarke has done a good job filling the gaps,” Allred said. “But we are at the point now where we are starting to feel that gap in staffing levels.”

Allred said they are trying to eliminate as many barriers as they can to get kids trained. He said that includes teaching

Development rights

continued from page 1 building more densely than base zoning without going through a rezoning process.

However, the idea has also faced opposition from some who see it as putting the burden of development on residents in the county’s east to benefit those in the west. The previous Board of Supervisors discussed the program and decided not to go forward with it.

The sale of those development rights distinguishes Transfer of Development Rights from Purchase of Development Rights, in which the county government buys those development rights with public funds and simply extinguishes them.

Middleburg Mayor Bridge Littleton, them how to swim and working with anyone who struggles with the pre-test.

To achieve certification, lifeguard candidates have to pass a pre-test that consists of a 300-yard swim (12 laps), a two-minute timed water tread, and a timed brick dive in which the person dives to the bottom of a 10-foot pool and retrieves a 10-pound brick.

Skarke said they will even train someone so they can pass the pre-test. He spoke of one girl who took three hours to pass the pre-test.

“She just wouldn’t stop; she was tenacious. She still guards for us and she’s amazing,” he said.

In addition to offering free training, PRCS streamlined the hiring process, allowing applicants to be hired before they who helped organized the Loudoun Together summit, presented to the county committee, pointing to the development threat to Loudoun’s best farmland and its $500 million agritourism industry. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s most recent 2017 Census of Agriculture found Loudoun had lost 10% of its farmland and its farms over the previous five years, shedding 137 farms and 12,860 acres of farmland. That is also an accelerating rate of loss compared to previous censuses.

“If we’re losing 10%, at that current rate, pretty soon, you can add the math, we’re going to lose this golden treasure that we have,” Littleton said.

He pitched the concept, if done right, as a win-win for both west and east. Littleton said the program could for example allow data center developers to buy those rights to increase their floor-area ratio, certify, according to Communications Manager Kraig Troxell. which could mean buildings with more stories and, he argued, a more efficient use of eastern Loudoun land.

Clarice Hartman, 17, a junior at Loudoun Valley High School, certified to be a lifeguard over spring break. She said she wanted a summer job and decided to become a lifeguard because it seemed like a cool job that would keep her active and help out in her community.

She said anyone interested should give it a try.

“There is a lot of stuff to remember, but the skills aren’t that hard to do. You just have to learn how to do it right and make sure you do the right things at the right time,” she said.

Ella Bober, 15, a freshman at Woodgrove High School, also certified over spring break. She said as a swimmer she thought lifeguarding would be a great opportunity to learn some skills that she could apply in other situations.

She said the training was rigorous, but it got easier as the class continued.

“We developed a lifeguard pathway program where we will hire a non-certified person to go through the training process, but they are hired as a Loudoun County employee. They can’t be in the stand to lifeguard, but we set them up with training to get them going,” Skarke said.

Skarke said the program has been an immediate success, saying that since they started offering free training in late November the classes have been full.

He said as of May 23, 100 people have certified as lifeguards, and the county plans to offer free training for the foreseeable future to not only fully staff Loudoun pools but to help with surrounding jurisdictions as well.

“You could limit the need to extend water and power because you’re not having to use as many acres to achieve it [data center development], and you’ll save acreage in the east for those other more important needs, like affordable housing, school zones, mixed-use industrial, CNA [Capital Needs Assessment] needs, parks, things like that,” Littleton said. “So the question is, how do we allow the more efficient use of data center property in the east to relieve some of the pressure that’s being caused by how they’re currently built?”

Turner said the program could be used to steer data center development into preferred areas by designating where those development rights can be bought—for

Lifeguards in Loudoun County start at about $15.61 an hour and most county facilities are hiring for summer and yearround positions.

“Looking from the outside in, it’s a cake job from a patron’s point of view, but the purpose is you train for the readiness of it. You have the skills to never have to use them,” Skarke said.

“It’s a really fun job. There is a serious aspect to it, but I personally got a tremendous amount of satisfaction and fulfillment learning the skills I learned and being proficient at it,” Allred said, speaking of his days working as a lifeguard. “I enjoyed the camaraderie and collaboration with other like-minded kids and it’s a really, really fun job.” n example, in Ashburn’s Data Center Alley but not along Rt. 7, where zoning allows data centers but supervisors hope to avoid that development.

“Where a TDR program really gets interesting is when we can really begin to shape the data center growth in eastern Loudoun County to the benefit of eastern Loudoun County and western Loudoun County,” Turner said.

The idea of TDR program, which has been on the shelf since the last board’s term, will be worked back into the Department of Planning and Zoning staff’s work plan. The next logical step, they advised, would be hiring a contractor to conduct a market study. It may be some time until that happens—the department has previously reported it is already at capacity in its work plan. n