Opposition to pool bond issue

You have done a great job of promoting Prop Y in your paper with letters from mayors, pastors and general bias support overall. I would like to offer a glimpse of concern from the other side, aka the "pool people." My husband and I have managed the Scott City Dolphins swim team for approximately ten years now. We have devoted our summers to competitive swimming and see firsthand the absolute joy it brings to hundreds of children and their parents all the way from Blytheville, Arkansas to St. Genevieve, Missouri.

For pastors Watts and Brothers (both of whom I have deep appreciation and respect for) to say, "a swimming pool is a swimming pool" could not be further from the truth. As a public educator, I see where this proposition has great educational benefits that no one should be against. However, to take something of significant value away from one set of children to perhaps benefit another set of children is essentially what is going to happen in this scenario, and it isn't right.

I sincerely hope the city of Cape does do the further research it claims and exhausts all possible resources from area businesses and schools to ultimately build a pool at least comparable to what they already have now. I do not live in the Cape district and our son will probably be finished swimming by the time a new pool is built, but I can't sit idly by and have others not fully understand the other side.

SARAH PRUDEN, Scott City