NORWICH – The Kurt Beyer Pool faces another summer without repair after the Joint Committees discussed the fate of the pool Tuesday night, citing that no money is available to make necessary repairs and that it will have to be closed another year.
When city officials were forced to close the pool, it was originally thought work would be completed and the pool reopen by June this year; however, the denial of the city’s application for grant money from the State Environmental Protection Fund in December and the lack of funding available in this year’s city budget will likely keep the pool from opening in 2012.
The pool is in need of a new filtration system, electrical system and gunite to seal the inside and around the pool – projects accumulating a total cost of $251,845. After closing last summer, swimmers had the option of using the pool at the Norwich High School, but usage dropped off severely.
Alternatives including membership fees and per use fees ranging from $1 to $4.35 have been discussed to help offset the cost of repairs, but not knowing how the implementation of such charges would affect attendance, council members argued that having such a program in place would allow a debt without the sure means of paying it off.
“We’re really between a rock and a hard place ... I’d like to see the pool open this year; we closed it last year as a temporary thing,” said Walter Schermerhorn, Fourth Ward Alderman, but other council members noted that this was based on the premise that the city would qualify for grant money and William Roberts, city clerk, affirmed there was no room in the budget to pay for any of the needed repairs.
To save on the project, the council also discussed repairing the filtration system without adding the proposed gunite – which would save more than $100,000 on the project – but the notion was adamantly opposed by Public Works Superintendent Carl Ivarson, who said the gunite is a necessary component in the project and the pool hasn’t been resealed in more than two decades.
“What we should do, is do the whole pool now. Then we have 15 years before we have to do anything again,” Ivarson said, adding that not replacing the gunite would force the city to shut the pool down again within two years. Alderman Bob Carey asked if it really needed to be replaced, which Ivarson simply responded, “yes.”
The council discussed the option of using the pool at NHS again this year and while City Youth Bureau Director Robert Mason assured the council that the school would agree, last year’s attendance of recreational swimmers did not support keeping the pool open. The number of swimmers who used the NHS pool in 2011 dropped by more than 8,000 from the previous year at Kurt Beyer.
“People attended swimming lessons,” said Mason, “but the numbers don’t justify open swim or the lifeguard on duty.”
To have the pool project completed by June, Ivarson said that contract bids must be sent out immediately.
“I think we’ll have to go another year without the pool,” Carey said. The council concurred without an official motion to not proceeded with the project this year.
The council is still debating to make open swim an option at the NHS pool.