WEST POTTSGROVE >> The township pool, which has struggled to stay open and solvent in the past two years will not open for the summer 2017 season, the township commissioners announced this week.
“It saddens all of us that we won’t be able to open it,” commissioners’ Chairman Steve Miller said.
Commissioner Pete LaRosa has championed the cause of the pool over the past two years and has been meeting with operating companies trying to find one willing to take on operation of the township pool.
It was LaRosa who brought Bennington Pool Services to the table last year and the company agreed to operate the pool – but then closed it during a heat wave in July for financial reasons.
Those same reasons remain a barrier to finding a new company, LaRosa said.
“Companies want to manage the pool, but not be a partner. They all want a guarantee of income, which we cannot provide,” he said.
Miller appointed LaRosa and commissioners Charles Valentine and Dominic Gentile to make up a committee looking for a solution to be able to open the pool in 2018 – “at no cost to the township,” LaRosa added.
The township pool is not the only local pool whose finances are suffering.
Last month, the North End Pool, a private pool in Pottstown, launched a GoFundMe campaign to try to shore up its finances.
And it was because of finances that the township ended up with the pool in the first place.
The township took over the pool from the former Colonial Pool Swim Club in 2010 after the club was unable to pay its property taxes.
Operated since 1968 as a private, nonprofit community pool, the Colonial fell behind on its tax payments and finally fell victim to a combination of age, a slow economy and more homes with their own pools in their backyards.
The township paid $71,000 in back taxes and unpaid bills to take over the pool in 2010.
The township also put as least $250,000 into refurbishing the pool facility by the time it re-opened in August, 2011.
Since then, it has struggled to break even.
For two years – 2012 and 2013 – the YMCA of Pottstown took over the operation of the pool, a service for which the township paid about $27,000.
The YMCA brought its summer camp to the pool, as well as other local summer camps, as an inexpensive way to provide summer swimming opportunities for local children.
In 2014, after a change of personnel at the YMCA, the township only had to pay $10,000 for the YMCA to run the pool, but membership, and revenues, plummeted.
Whetstone confirmed that pool membership went from 38 non-Y members to nine in 2014.
In 2015, in a series of almost comical votes, the board of commissioners voted to open and/or close the pool several times before finally deciding to hire Bennington to run the pool for the township – something the company insisted it could do at a profit.
