Thompson Falls discusses indoor pool

by Danielle Switalski
| July 28, 2010 1:30 PM

A small group of Thompson Falls residents presented the idea of implementing an indoor swimming pool to the city council on Monday night.

Thompson Falls resident Katy Walton made a short presentation to the council concerning the possibility of looking into an indoor swimming pool in order to see if the town would support a project like this in the future.

Walton said for years she has heard residents comment on the convenience of an indoor swimming pool and she and two other women decided to present the initial idea to the council.

The city council made a unanimous decision to form an indoor swimming pool committee, headed by Walton.

The city council also appointed Raoul Ribeiro to act as a liason between the indoor pool committee and the city council to pursue the feasibility of implementing an indoor pool in town.

"In these fiscal times, we are just looking. It's an exploratory process and no funds are committed at this time," said Ribeiro. "I want to be a team player, I am much in favor of this and for years I wanted to look into this, and it's nice to see some refreshing ideas coming out of city hall."

An indoor swimming pool for the town is just in initial discussions and the committee, along with Ribeiro, are going to be conducting a feasibility study in the next few months to present to the council.

Walton said they will be looking at other communities that have built indoor pools as well as comparing and contrasting the costs of either building a new pool or changing the current pool into an indoor facility.

The committee will also compile information on the cost of maintaining and sustaining the facility should one be built.

"We don't want it to be a big drain on the community so we want to see if it is feasible and go back to the city council and see where we can go from there," said Walton.

Part of the committee's research will include going to other communities throughout the state of Montana who have indoor pool facilities to see what sort of funding options these cities have used in order to not only build an indoor pool, but keep it up and running.

Walton believes the answers are out there on ways to get the indoor pool off the ground, however, she does not want anyone to get their hopes up yet as they want to first complete the feasibility study before moving forward.

If the study proves hopeful and the information is presented to the city council, public meetings will be held to take comment from the public in order to see if this is something people in town would be interested in pursuing.

"We want to go in cautiously and do our research," said Walton. "They (the city council), like me, want to make sure we do our homework and look into the details of it and how we would sustain it and we want to go in pragmatically."

Ribeiro said there are private grant opportunities out there that could help with building an indoor pool facility.

Grant and possible funding opportunities will be part of the feasibility study conducted by the committee and will also be presented to the city council in the coming months once the research is complete.