Editorial: Pool advocates have earned fruits of labour
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A DECISION on the fate of the Golden Square Swimming Pool will be made at the next City of Greater Bendigo council meeting on February 13.
Members of the Save our Golden Square Swimming Pool, council officers and councillors Rod Fyffe, Elise Chapman, Barry Lyons and James Williams met at the pool to discuss the work that would need to be done for the pool to reopen next summer.
The councillors said $280,000 was required to fix the pool, significantly less than $880,000 first outlined by the council.
But the councillors stressed that the $280,000 was the amount needed to cover basic updates.
“There may be more hidden costs on top of that and that is something we have to consider,” Cr Fyffe said.
The councillors also requested the community group put together a list of committee members and volunteers before their council forum this Wednesday.
Save our Golden Pool organiser Ken Hamilton said constructing the list would show the group is committed to reopening the pool.
“It would be a big help; just so they know we’re committed and have the actual people to run the place.”
Cr Rod Fyffe said his fear was volunteers would drop off over time.
“It’s critical that we keep the volunteer numbers up,” he said.
“It’s all well and good that everyone is excited now, but what happens down the track. That’s when it starts to be a stress.”
But Mr Hamilton said he was confident the group could manage the running of the place.
“I can understand where he’s coming from, but we have 80 to 90 people turn up to our meetings and a lot of those people said they’d be volunteers.”
He said while he was pleased to have met with council representatives, it was hard to gauge their intentions.
“We’re really please the council took the time to meet us today and go through what the pool does need.
“From our point of view, the new $25 million pool in Kangaroo Flat is a fair way off, so $280,000 over six years does seem like a reasonable cost.”