City to propose contract to cut aquatic center hours in half

If Columbus Council approves, the Columbus Aquatic Center’s weekly hours of operation will soon be cut in half.

After months of debate over the future of the facility, the city administration is set to formally ask Columbus Council to approve a contract with a new pool management company to operate the facility for 45 hours a week, down from the 89 hours its patrons have been used to since its inception.

At council’s repeated instruction over the last several months, the administration has brought forth proposals to take funds from other Parks and Recreation programs to keep the facility fully functional. But council has consistently objected to the proposals until last week when Councilor Skip Henderson said he would propose maintaining the facility’s current budget of about $850,000 going forward.

Jeff Pishko, head swimming coach of the Columbus Hurricanes, the center’s largest user, said cutting back sharply on hours will “dramatically affect the aquatic world here in Columbus.”

“It’s really disappointing that they’re considering doing this,” Pishko said. “Because as I think we all know, usually once government cuts something back like this, it rarely ever gets funded back fully again. This is probably the beginning of the end of this facility.”

Mayor Teresa Tomlinson said one of her fears is that the city will not get the most out of the facility.

“That’s one of my greatest fears, that we strangle it financially so that it’s never optimized,” Tomlinson said. “My hope is that (the new company) will show us what can be done with it and then it will be worthy of additional investment.”

Tomlinson said the administration intends to negotiate with the new company to see if there is a way to optimize the money available and to figure partnerships and volunteerism into the mix and possibly get more than 45 hours a week.

“One of the things we’ve decided to do is to attempt to negotiate the most we can possibly get,” Tomlinson said. “The vendor has said that for the amount of money we have budgeted, they can run the facility for 45 hours. But after the discussions we’ve had, the opportunities that we have to use partnerships, with volunteers and others who have offered to be involved with programming, we’re going to have intensive discussions with the vendor to see if that might assist them.”

In the council agenda for this week’s meeting, City Manager Isaiah Hugley revealed the name of the company chosen for presentation to council. American Pool Service of Georgia, based in Alpharetta, submitted a bid of $1.27 million to keep the center open for 89 hours a week. Asked to estimate how many hours it could keep the facility open under the existing budget, the company said 45 hours.

Those numbers are almost identical to what Parks and Recreation Director James Worsley earlier told councilors it would take to fully operate the facility. In fact, Worsley told council in 2012, while the center was still under construction and when he was still a new hire, that they were not allocating enough money to properly operate the facility. At the time, he said $1.2 million was what it would take.

But the city opted to go with a low bidder, USA Pools, which signed a contract to operate the facility for $650,000, plus the estimated utility costs of about $170,000, for a total of $820,000.

That company’s performance was less than stellar, and the city ended up canceling its contract and handing the keys to Parks and Rec on an interim basis in 2015.

Since then, Parks and Rec has been operating the center on a shoestring, with two department executives pulling double duty at their administrative jobs and operating the aquatic center.

After hearing numerous presentations of proposals to keep the center fully open, Councilor Skip Henderson, who is also chairman of the budget review committee, said last week that he could not support either of the ideas and suggested funding remain the same.

“I’ve got some real concerns,” Henderson said. “My vote is going to be to go with what we have.”

Which brings the city to Tuesday’s presentation and American Pool Service of Georgia’s bid to keep the facility going, but for only half the hours the swimming community is used to having.

Council meets at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday in council chambers on the second floor of the City Services Center next to the main library on Macon Road.

This story was originally published March 21, 2016 at 1:56 PM with the headline "City to propose contract to cut aquatic center hours in half."