Kenyon City Council Wants to Open Pool on Time

The Kenyon City Council held a special Zoom meeting tonight and members expressed a desire to open the city pool June 1, 2020.  City Administrator Mark Vahlsing brought up the matter for information purposes reporting he did a polling of a number of area cities and towns.

He said all seemed to be in a holding pattern and planned on moving forward with opening their municipal pools in June, "Our goal would be to have that pool, whether it's the first part of June, or delayed we still want the pool to open.  So basically, it's more information right now and then I wanted to see if anybody had any questions.  You know we'll see what the Governor, what the state kind of tells us what to do in the next few weeks.  But right now that's the direction we're going to go."

Council member Dan Rechtzigel stated, "As long as the risk is low.  We've gotta give these kids something to do.  Anyway we can get that pool open I think we gotta do it.  One of the things in this, let's say we had to open it up late.  Is there anything that would prevent us from, other than having lifeguards going off to college, from keeping it open later in the summer?"

Mayor Doug Henke agreed saying, 'I look at it this way too.  It's the parents' responsibility, if they want their children there, okay.  If they don't, then they can keep them at home.  I also look at it this way.  It might be great if we have a great flood of kids there, maybe we could stagger the hours.  Let's say one group comes in for 90 minutes.  Then another group comes in.  I'm just saying it's only an idea."

The Kenyon Mayor added maybe they could reduce the cost, "They've (the kids) have put up with enough already this year.  This is something that maybe we could give back to the parents and that would just cover the cost for the lifeguards.  It's only a thought but I am definitely in favor of going forward with seeing the pool ready for summer."

Kenyon Public Works Director Wayne Ehrich told the council, "Once you put the water in the pool it takes about two weeks for the chemicals to get balanced out and to heat the pool.  Right now we're going to start cleaning out tomorrow and paint the pool.  There's about a week of dry time on the paint.  We can hold off until mid-May.  If we're going to open on June 1st as planned I gotta have the hose going in the pool by May 18th."

No vote was taken but the Mayor asked the council to weigh in on the topic and all were in favor of moving forward with the opening of the Kenyon Municipal Pool June 1st if allowed by the state.