The Crookston City Council held a special meeting to discuss the Crookston Community Pool repairs and structural evaluation payments.
Crookston resident of almost 40 years, Bob Blazek, voiced his opinion that the City should save money and close the pool. “I have seen a lot of money dumped into the swimming pool, I call it the hole because money keeps going in, and there is no profit,” said Blazek. “It’s a big expense to the City, to the taxpayers, and I don’t agree with more money being spent on it. A couple of months ago, it came out that it could cost $1 million to fix the problems they got. Now they want to dump another $50,000 into having an HVAC/Structural engineer or somebody else come in and look at everything to tell them the building is shot. In my mind, I would like to see them close it and be done with it. We don’t need more expense to the city when they are struggling the way it is. Property taxes keep going up, and we’re not getting a whole lot more benefit out of it, in my mind.”
The council had a short discussion before voting unanimously to spend $54,000 for the pool heat actuators (two), with installation at $40,000. The estimated HVAC/Plumbing Engineer evaluation will be $7,500. And the structural engineer evaluation will cost $6,500.
To pay for the unbudgeted expense, they are taking money from the following accounts-
Timberwolves trip – $200
Reserve Beverage contract – $5,000
Reserve Take a Kid Fishing – $285
Reserve Club Kid – $854.91
Reserve Bark for the Park – $3,266.56
Reserve Franklin School Park – $500
Reserve Maplewood Park – $1,465
Reserve Gymnastics – $658.45
Reserve Baseball Field Improvement – $5,000
Fund Balance unreserved – $36,770.08
Crookston City Administrator Corky Reynolds said they will move forward with the repairs to open the pool and find out what kind of condition the building is in. “The council said yes, go ahead and get the actuators in there so we can open the doors. But, more importantly, they affirmed going out and getting a structural engineer to do more in-depth testing and also an HVAC and piping engineer to do more testing on the areas we know are in need of testing and potential replacement.”
The council wants to get the pool open and decide on the pool’s future after getting more info about the structural and HVAC/piping reports. “We want the testing to occur in the environment that is now. So we can look at the chemicals, so we can look at the vapors, so we can look at how it works right now and then get the experts to say if you want it to be better, here is what you have to do and we can evaluate the cost, and the council will have all the data to make the ultimate decision.”
