Meeting on Municipal Pool hopefully sparks three phase refurb

Members of the Hi-Line Future Foundation (HLFF) and representatives from the City of Malta met last Wednesday evening at Malta City Hall to discus the future of the City's 63-year-old Municipal Pool and ultimately came up with a tentative three-phase plan to refurbish the pool instead of trying to afford a brand-new swimming facility.

Malta Mayor John Demarais, Public Works Director Jim Trulove, City Clerk Lorie Bond, Parks and rec Co-directors Julia Tatafu and Sally Wright and Councilwoman Bonnie Wiederrick met with nearly a dozen HLFF members and they told him that he did not think that an assessment conducted by an engineering firm in the summer of 2018 offered any reasonable options in three options contained in that study. Those three options were to; rehabilitate the existing pool, a new swimming pool at the existing spot, or a new aquatics facility at a new location. Prices for these projects were estimated at around $870,000, $1.84 million, and $2.2 million, respectively.

Mayor Demarais asked the HLFF members - which includes members of the Malta Swim Team organization - what they would like to see as far as the pool's refurbishment and the first thing on the list was a zero-entry entrance to the pool. (Currently, there are stairs at the north end of the pool, but a zero-entry makes pool entry more accessible and would also make the facility ADA compliant for special need swimmers. Another wish-list item would be to have the current bathhouse gutted and rebuilt and modernized.

"That sounds scary, but it's really not," Mayor Demarais said of redoing the pool house. "The building is all lumber on the inside and the project would be doable in a timely manner."

Director Truelove said that he feels that the Public Works Crew would be able to do much of the refurbishment work, but what they couldn't do the would subcontract locally. Director Truelove said that if all goes well, he would hope to start work on the pool in late July, which would cut the pool season and the Malta Swim team's use of the pool a little short this year. Malta Swim Team's Dara Wilke said that the team will not be hosting a swim meet this year and said that the owners of the Edgewater Inn have offered to let the team practice there if need be.

Director Truelove said that he is currently continuing to work on the filtration system at the pool and other areas of work needed to be done on the pool could include expanding the pool's width from five to six lanes, a new gutter system, a liner for the pool, and perhaps a water feature for smaller children to enjoy. Mayor Demarais stressed that all the plans talked about at the meeting are, for now, only tentative, but added that he thinks the pool could be back to a top-notch facility in a very short amount of time if things fall into place.

"I think we can do this for much cheaper than three options in the assessment, we received, and the City of Malta would like to thank the Hi-Line Future Foundation for all their efforts in helping us get to where we need to be with the City Pool," he said.

Co-Director Tatafu said at the Tuesday night Malta City Council meeting that the pool is tentatively scheduled to open on June 23, a week after the lifeguards are given their 2019 training. (The City of Malta is currently accepting applications for lifeguards for the 2019 season and the help wanted advertisement is in the classified section of this week's PCN.)