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The Future of the Atkinson Pool Is Uncertain
The Sudbury Select Board hosted “Capital Night” on Monday, February 24. Capital Night is “a joint meeting with the Finance Committee (FinCom), Capital Improvement Advisory Committee (CIAC) and Sudbury Public Schools (SPS) Committee to review Town Meeting capital articles.”
After reviewing the Town Manager’s Capital Budget, Finance Committee co-chair Mike Joachim pressed Town Manager Andy Sheehan on the choice to spend $1.3M in the Town Manager’s Capital Budget rather than spending a little less to fund needed hires like a Fire Inspector. (54:00) By and large, the Town Manager’s Capital Budget was an uneventful, albeit lengthy conversation.
The group moved into capital article presentations – but a single article dominated deliberation for over an hour— the Atkinson Pool renovation. Duran presented that the bids had come in high, and the Park and Recreation Committee had advocated for greater investment in HVAC systems than was in the original scope of the project. All in all, to do the full project they will need nearly another $1M in funding.
Member Tom Travers of the CIAC broadened the conversation about the pool to a question of whether or not the added investment in the pool made sense relative to the economics of operating the pool. FinCom member Hank Sorett argued for an open dialogue about whether or not to abandon the pool “I think we have to make a decision as a Town. Do we want to be in the pool business at all?”
After an exchange with Select Board Vice Chair Dan Carty, who questioned how the project had been managed to date, Town Manager Sheehan noted that the pool is 40 years old and was not included in the community center project – making it more difficult to sort out the renovation problems now. Sheehan added that he felt it would be a good idea to “Take a step back and make a determination of do we really want to run a swimming pool? And is that an amenity that we want to continue to operate? It is not easy to run, it is not easy to run as an enterprise.”
Select Board member Janie Dretler said “I’ll just remind everybody, not too long ago, just a few years ago, the Town purchased land with multiple pools on it, with no plan.” She went on to add “I guess the good news is this community really values being able to have access to a pool for the public. Atkinson has languished—this community, for decades, has not invested in its capital improvements in that pool, and prior managements have decided to run it, as somebody pointed out, run it until it fails. I’m not a proponent of doing that, I think that’s obvious to everyone here. And the longer we kick the can, as some people have said in the past, the problem just grows larger and becomes more expensive.” (3:00:05)
There was some discussion of establishing a working group to evaluate options for the pool – but no decisions were made. Town Manager Sheehan advised the attendees not to rush into any decisions, as there’s still plenty of time before the Town Meeting warrant goes to print.
