Everybody into the pool

VENETA — The Elmira High School band was playing in the parking lot. Smoke was rising from the barbecue grills. And a bunch of area kids were clutching their towels and eagerly waiting for Mayor Sharon Hobart-Hardin to say what she had to say so they could burst through the front door, sign up at the desk and get into that blue, blue water.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” hollered 14-year-old Ashlee Dalke, after the mayor addressed the impatient crowd gathered for Saturday’s grand opening of the $3.2 million project, telling them:

“Today we are celebrating. Today we are opening the Veneta Community Pool. The words ‘celebration’ and ‘community’ are the perfect descriptors for this incredible accomplishment,” Hobart-­Hardin said. “Because you know, four years ago, our old pool floated right out of the ground.”

Yes it did.

In November 2006, Veneta’s old community pool, built in the late 1950s, indeed rose from the earth around it after late-fall stormwater saturated the ground around and underneath it.

Contractors had finished repairs to the pool’s drain, but had yet to refill the old pool that fall.

Without the added weight of 87,000 gallons of water, the concrete pool was pushed up by rising groundwater until its deep end floated nearly 3 feet higher than the surrounding decking, causing pipes to buckle and break.

Faced with an un­repairable, half-century-­old pool, the city began a campaign to raise money to build a new pool.

But raising a million dollars in a town of 4,900 people is not an easy thing to do.

Thus a $1.1 million bond measure — which taxes property owners 28 cents per $1,000 of assessed value over 20 years — was proposed in 2008 and voters approved it. By then, however, the city had decided it wanted something more than just a replacement for the old pool on East Broadway, which measured 20 yards long and 15 yards wide.

Instead, the city wanted a 25-yard-long, six-lane pool with a diving board, a new building with dressing rooms and showers, and possibly a “kiddie” pool and spa.

All but the latter two items have been realized, and if more money is raised, the kiddie pool and spa might become reality, too.

In addition to the bond measure, the city also came up with $1.4 million for the project, which included a $300,000 insurance settle­ment, city administrator Ric Ingham said.

An additional $83,000 was raised by the community, with more than 65 local businesses making contributions, as well as area residents in a campaign called “Buy a Brick, Build a Pool.” Commemorative bricks will be installed at a later date in front of the pool building’s entrance.

“In this economy, that kind of commitment is huge,” Hobart-Hardin told the crowd gathered for the ribbon cutting. “What we have done here is a major accomplishment. The last pool lasted 50 years, but this one will last even longer because of your hard work and commitment.”

While the old pool had a capacity of about 80, the new one has a capacity of about 170, Ingham said.

Although that many did not fill the pool Saturday, it was plenty crowded about 1 p.m.

“I think it’s a great thing,” said Veneta resident Harry Kline, who was in the water with his 4-year-old son, George. “I think it’s something the city of Veneta needed.”

And it’s where George plans to learn how to swim and not just bob in the water with Dad.

“George wants to use the diving board already,” Kline said. “They won’t let him until he learns to swim the pool. He’s been up there a half-dozen times begging to go off.”

Veneta’s public works superintendent, Kyle Schauer, grew up swimming at the old pool in the 1970s.

Now, his sons Connor, 13, and Cooper, 9, plan to get plenty of swim time in at the new pool, Schauer said.

“For us to be able to have a facility like this to teach our kids how to swim is huge,” he said. It’s also comforting for parents to have a place to send their kids in the summertime.

“I know where they’re at,” he said.