The Bond Issue: The Mike Sedar Swimming Pool

The City of Casper's elected board, the City Council, has just voted to postpone rebuilding the decommissioned Mike Sedar Swimming Pool.

The old pool, which was ripped out either last summer or the summer before, was one of the principal pools in the town.  It was a 25  yard pool, and as amazing as it may seem to some, it was used for AAU swimming competitions when I was a kid.  Meter pools were rare at the time, and the pool had starting platforms at that time allowing it to be used in that fashion.  Principally built as a recreational pool (when most recreational pools were of a conventional construction) it also had a side area for a high dive, which was taken out some time ago based upon some concept of the appropriate depth for that, which it didn't meet.

Now it isn't there at all and now the city is pushing back its plan to rebuild the pool, which was going to be rebuilt in a much more elaborate, recreational pool, fashion.  The city noted that costs were going to be higher than what it anticipated but it also noted that it wanted to wait and see how the school district bond issue progressed.  In other words, they recognize the need for a pool, but may hold back to see if the school district, whose needs exceed the city's, achieves success in the bond issue thereby giving the city a little breathing room.

This is a distressing development.  In an era in which the news media here and all the government entities are telling us that the populations of the county is projected to rise, we seem reluctant to replace and repair (which is all we're really doing) those facilities that earlier generations of Casperites built, with smaller resources.  Right now we''re taking out one high school pool entirely and hopefully will be able to replace it.  Two others are in distress and need to be addressed.  A city pool has been removed and there's some question as to whether it will be replaced.  The old outdoor pool at Kelly Walsh was removed some time ago, and it was a city pool, and it was never replaced.  A party took a serious run at trying to grossly restrict or take out a local rifle range this past year. 

I'm not saying that a city needs to have everything, but in order to be a nice place to live it needs some facilities. And when the ones we have start to disappear and there's questions as to whether they'll be replaced, that's a long term problem.