After careful thought and consideration, we have decided that the Eleanor Pool will not open this summer. I understand that this may not be the most popular decision that we could make and that many of our community members will be upset with this news. However, at this time, there are just too many concerns and other unknown situations that could occur over the next few months due to the COVID-19 crisis for us to open the pool this year.
I can promise you that our Town Council and Park Board members are just as upset as many of you are with this decision. It was truly a painful decision for us to make. Like you, we take tremendous pride in all aspects of our town, especially our parks and pool. Many individuals, including our Pool Manager Ron McDade, his staff, our Certified Pool Operators Carl Neal and Johnny Watson and many others worked very hard to make last year’s pool season such a huge success for our town. It would be an understatement to say how excited and eager that we were to open the gates for you this summer and how disappointed that we are since we know it cannot happen.
At this point last year, we had already hired our staff and the final touches were being completed so we could fill the pool. This year things are obviously much different, and we knew a decision on opening the pool or not had to be made soon. After considering the unknowns of “what could happen” over the next few months, we discussed several known factors that would make this year even less likely to happen due to the current crisis we are in. Lifeguard certification classes in our area have been canceled and many of our returning guards would not be able to return until they were able to take that course. It would also be unfair for us to hire any of these high school and college students with the likelihood that our opening date could be pushed back or even canceled due to the crisis anyway. This would have given them a false sense of security for employment this summer and would have either prevented or delayed them from taking another job elsewhere to earn money. We also had to consider the current economic state that we are in. The Governor’s Stay-at-Home order and the closure of non-essential businesses have negatively affected our town’s revenue estimates for the remainder of our fiscal year. Allocating time and money towards opening the pool would be a financial risk that is not worth taking, especially since the pool was not guaranteed to open due to this crisis anyway.
Again, we are very sorry to make this announcement and we truly hope everyone understands that this is the best decision for our town as a whole. Our Park Board will begin planning and working on improvement projects for the pool to take place later this year so we can make the 2021 season the best one yet.
Thank you,
Mayor Cam Clendenin