Coun. Adriana Vizzari says the St. Davids pool committee will be meeting soon, and if there was any doubt the community needs a pool, this summer definitely proved the need for it, reflecting the changing demographics with a growing number of families.
The swim team was popular with the youth in the community, and did really well over the summer against teams from larger municipalities, says Vizzari.
And both the swim team and swim classes were well-attended, with numbers that increased over last year.
“It shows we have a community that likes to use its pool,” she says.
The Electrifying Eels, made up of swimmers from both NOTL pools, came in second as a team at the regional competition that winds up the summer, and includes all municipal swim teams, she says. “Last year we came in fifth.”
Several individual swimmers came home with medals, including firsts, she added.
She says she’s looking forward to hearing the ideas of the group advocating for an indoor pool.
As for St. Davids, her goal is just to ensure that it continues to have a pool.
A design for a new pool that comes with a $5 million price tag was approved in 2019, but since then, the town has gone through rounds of funding applications with no luck, and without a grant from other levels of government, committee members haven’t started on raising its portion of the cost. They have received donations of about $52,000.
Although the committee’s mandate was originally to raise money to help fund that new pool, in March 2022, council changed the mandate of the committee so that members could also look at repairing as well as replacing the ageing structure.
It’s not as if St. Davids is asking for anything new, Vizzari says. “We have a current asset that was not maintained. Now it needs to be replaced or fixed.”
