Pool facilities projects update presented at Cape Girardeau City Council meeting

Parks and Recreation officials presented members of the Cape Girardeau City Council with updated plans to renovate Central Municipal Pool and build a new leisure pool at Jefferson Elementary School on Monday night.

In its current form, the proposed aquatics project would cost the city about $200,000 more in annual operational costs than those at its current facilities.

Parks and Recreation director Julia Jones opened the presentation by noting the current proposal is only a draft with numbers based on at least three consultant studies and several committees, which analyzed a variety of options for local aquatic facilities.

Jones said a minimum of five meetings have been held in recent months, in addition to an abundance of communications regarding the project and a Feb. 24 presentation to the Cape Girardeau School Board.

The numbers presented by Jones, with assistance from recreation division manager Penny Williams, were consistent with those previously presented to the school board.

The parks officials reminded council members of the figures being “conservative estimates” in regards to the proposed aquatic facilities’ potential revenue, and noted some of the proposed increases in expenditures would be unavoidable due to looming minimum wage increases.

In its current form, Jones said, the proposed plan would ideally begin with the school district moving forward with the Jefferson leisure pool facility designs by the fall of this year with a potential timeline for completion in 2021.

Renovations to the Central Municipal Pool could move forward once construction of the Jefferson facility is completed, Jones said.

The renovations at Central would put the facility out of operation for about a year as well, Jones said, which puts the operational impacts of both facilities to go into full effect by 2023.

While the aquatics presentation showed ways to achieve the project’s proposed goals, city officials voiced concerns with the project due to shrinking a city budget and declining tax revenue.

“I’ve been a broken record about how we’re going to pay for this recurring cost, and that’s where we are now. I think the number is smaller than we thought it was going to be, and that’s the good news,” city manager Scott Meyer said. “The bad news is that recurring budgets are probably more constricted than we thought they would be.”

Ward 4 Councilman Robbie Guard explained his reluctance would be the same for any other municipal department seeking budgetary increases, and Mayor Bob Fox pointed out the large financial variable of the project’s upcoming geotechnical studies.

But the mayor also acknowledged the possibility the geotechnical study may uncover no foundational problems whatsoever, significantly reducing the cost of the project.

“If it turns out that the walls of [the Central Municipal Pool] are okay, we could put a liner inside that thing and replace the equipment,” Fox said. “We could save a lot of money.”

Regardless of the conflicting opinions in the room, all participants in the presentation seemed to agree on one decision — the geotechnical study would need to be conducted soon if the project wanted to remain on its proposed timeline.

“We need to get rolling pretty quick on that,” Cape Girardeau School District assistant superintendent Josh Crowell said. “Because again, it goes back to educating our kids and working with our community in getting that done.”