Any of the readers of this blog who have visited the Magrath pool know that it is in sad shape. And, any of you who have visited the Raymond pool, in the next town over, know that their new pool is beautiful and fun and amazing. This summer, a lot of people I know have been talking about the need for Magrath to upgrade the pool. The other talk is that without upgrades to the filtration system, the pool may not be allowed to open next year.
So, a few friends and I decided to hold a meeting and invite anyone we happened to be talking to and form an organization that would fundraise for pool upgrades, and encourage the town to support a massive renovation. The above picture is of my kids and the Hoy kids bottledriving. We decided to do monthly fundraisers and the bottle drive is our first one. If any of you reading this are from Magrath, please note that you can take your bottles, cans, milk jugs, etc. to the bottle depot on an ongoing basis and specify that you would like the money to go to the Pals of the Pool. We don't have quite enough manpower to get the whole town, but we've had 3 or 4 truckloads of bottles so far and we'll be back at it this Saturday, again.
In October, we want to do a haunted house at the swimming pool. I think that will be really fun, and will hopefully help us to continue to raise money.
Tonight I made a presentation to town council. I went into the meeting having read the local newspaper reports which made it sound like town council had been looking at the pool renos of other towns and that the pool was important to them, yadda, yadda, yadda. I thought we'd be on the same page. And, on the first two sections of the presentation why we need a pool, and what elements we would like to contain, they almost mocked me like I was miles behind them.
But, on the 3rd section of what we'd like them to do, things fell apart. Yeah, they want a pool (all councillors agree), and for it to have great features (again everyone, some even want it to be covered--Trevor Thomson), but they can't allocate money now (Sam Johnston), and they don't know about the future (Sam Johnston), and there is no plan in place, and they will not commit publicly to doing anything (Dennis Quinton). And, that committing town money to the pool is forced fundraising from the citizens and that if the town wants the pool, the citizens should fundraise it (Sam Johnston). Each councillor said something different and the answers were not necessarily consistent. I had to call Sam Johnston on the argument that funding the pool is forced fundraising, reminding him that it is the duty of municipal governments to provide services to the citizens and that most, if not all, communities include recreation facilities in that mandate.
Now in fairness, I know the town council is up against the wall. They specifically mentioned the Water Treatment plant as a big capital project that has to be done by 2012 or we won't have potable water. My thing though is that if they can't, then don't pretend! But they talk like there is going to be a major pool renovation, but that it will happen by some miracle without any advance planning on their part.
So, what does this boil down to? I think they were hoping I was going to come in and volunteer to fundraise the entire amount for a new pool--or our group fundraises heavily, then get the Lion's Club also donate heavily, then get all the labor donated, then apply all that to try to get matching grants from the provincial government. Then build a makeshift pool with whatever we are able to put together, and not do it anytime soon.
I am willing to work really hard, and try to get others on board with fundraising, but since these pools cost $1.5-$3.5 million--just for an outdoor pool--I think the town is right, we do need a miracle!
