Aquatic Center operational woes continue for city

Thanks to interim management by the Columbus Parks & Recreation Department, the Columbus Aquatic Center is still open for use 89 hours a week, all day Monday through Saturday and afternoons on Sundays.

Unfortunately, that's not a fiscally sustainable situation. The Columbus Consolidated Government has been searching for a new contractor to operate the swim center since January.

The previous contractor's operation of the center, as everyone in Columbus eventually learned, was so atrocious as to approach, if not actually constitute, contractual malfeasance. Finding a successor to operate on the city's schedule but still within the city's budget has thus far been impossible.

Parks & Recreation Director James Worsley announced last week that the city is focusing on one so-far unidentified applicant out of a field of several. The company's bid to keep the center open on its current schedule is $1.27 million. The city's budgeted amount: $836,000. For approximately that amount -- a little less, actually -- the applicants could operate the center for half that time, or 45 hours a week.

The city, the bidder and Parks & Rec have been doing some speculative arithmetic, especially in the area of potential revenue: How much could the center reasonably be expected to collect?

The unnamed company bidding for the contract estimates it could produce $525,000 if it operated the full 89 hours a week, which would more than offset the hefty increase in the city's budget for the facility. Worsley said his department could run the center for slightly less -- $1.24 million -- but estimated the potential revenue at less than half what the private contractor said it could produce. And even the "in-house" operation would eventually be no real bargain, because Worsley said his staff can't continue running the Aquatic Center without either more people and more money or cutting back on the hours it's open for public use.

In either case, Columbus taxpayers would not likely be happy with the return on their investment.

Councilor Judy Thomas expressed a reasonable concern about the "wide discrepancy" between the revenue projections. If the Columbus Aquatic Center is going to either cost a lot more money or offer the public a lot less service, getting some reliable numbers is critical. A contractor should demonstrate reasonable certainty that a return on the city's increased investment will pay off, both in the Consolidated Government budget and in competent, courteous, safe, dependable operation of the Aquatic Center during hours adequate to public needs and convenience, to make any deal worth serious consideration.

If the city can get this expensive and thus far troublesome house in order, its bumpy beginnings will eventually recede to the status of rueful anecdote. If not, it could turn out to be one of the biggest and hungriest white elephants we've ever had to feed.

This story was originally published November 28, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Aquatic Center operational woes continue for city."