Toronto’s mayor has written an open-letter to the city’s top athlete, explaining why council decided to pull out of aquatic programming at three local schools.

Mayor John Tory wrote the letter to Penny Oleksiak after the Olympic swimming champ advocated for the saving of the pool programming in Toronto’s budget in a tweet on Jan. 10.

Council was to consider closing 36 wading pools, 12 outdoor pools and 10 indoor Toronto District School Board pools in order to save about $2 million in its 2017 operating budget. (The city is facing a $91-million budget shortfall.)

But at the time, the mayor responded to her plea on Twitter, assuring the athlete her “gold medal message” had been received.

Nonetheless, in his recent letter to Oleksiak, which he released late Wednesday afternoon, Tory explained why in the end the city was forced to make “difficult decisions” when it came to programming at Duke of Connaught PS, Don Mills CI and York Memorial.

“City staff had recommended removing the city programming from these pools because there are other pools nearby and when we removed programming from 11 other TDSB pools in the past, the school board has always kept the pools open,” he wrote.

“While these three school pools are well used during the day by TDSB students, there is low usage by residents during the city’s programming in the evening and on weekends,” he said. “The city pays for 100 per cent of the costs to maintain and operate these pools but the agreement between the city and the TDSB gives the city access to only 58 per cent of the overall time.”

He said children will have access to other pools that are located about three kilometres away.

“Staff have assured us that children will still be able to learn and swim and parents will not have to go far to use the facilities,” he continued.

Tory cautioned it would be up to the school boards and its budgets to keep the pools operating, explaining that the city had just rented them for a short time.

He also took a dig at the province, saying the Ontario government should “more appropriately” pay this bill.

He reassured Oleksiak that Toronto would continue to subsidize 26 pools in local schools and thanked her for being an inspiration.

“I would like to thank you again, Penny, for continuing to inspire young Canadians and Torontonians every day, this being just another example,” he concluded his letter.

Oleksiak has yet to respond to the news.

The 16-year-old athlete was at the Conn Smythe Sports Celebrities Dinner held at the Royal York Wednesday night. She told CP24 she saw the mayor had tweeted her but hadn’t had the chance to read his full letter yet.