NEW SCOTLAND — The Voorheesville School Board voted Monday to put up a $75,000 proposition to repair the district’s swimming pool and filtration system. District residents will be able to vote on the project on Tuesday, Nov. 17, from 2 to 9 p.m. at the high school.

“This was identified as a priority cost by the facilities committee,” Superintendent Brian Hunt told The Enterprise.

Hunt said that the district is proposing the capital improvement project, rather than using funds from the district’s maintenance budget, to get 61 percent of the cost reimbursed as state aid. The final cost to the district is expected to be $28,000, he said.

If the proposition passes, he said, the district will take up to $75,000 from its capital reserve fund, which currently has a balance of about $1 million.

“We get 61 percent returned to us the following budget year in state aid,” Hunt said.

If voters approve the project, the proposition must still be approved by the New York State Department of Education because it is a capital project, he said.

Hunt said that a vendor gave a cost estimate of $67,000, and the board added an extra $8,000 to the proposition to cover design fees and inflation.

Pool needs

The pool and the pool’s filtration system were installed in 2002, he said.

“Every summer, you do a facility walk through,” Hunt said. The district’s athletic director and members of its maintenance department told the facilities committee to look at the pool.

“The filter is starting to go bad,” Hunt said. He described the system as differing from that of a residential pool, being a large, cylindrical system with pumps and other plumbing.

“When we back flush it — regularly, or for maintenance — we get leakage of sand in the pool,” Hunt said. The district’s maintenance crew must then suck the debris out, he said.

The work may take up to four days, but “we want to allow a week for it,” Hunt said. If voters and the State Education Department approve the project, work could be done over the December or February school breaks, he said.

“We have to avoid swim-team season,” he said.

The project will include removing a large metal cylinder that must be cut up to get it out of the building, Hunt said.

Community value

“The pool at the middle school and high school campus is obviously valued by our entire community,” wrote James Franchini, the district’s assistant superintendent for finance and operations, in an email to The Enterprise. “We spend a great deal of time and effort to ensure the pool is properly maintained. 

“This reconstruction project is a necessary step that we have to undertake to make sure the pool continues to be operational for our students and community members,” he continued.

The pool is used by community members, and for competitive swimming with a combined team made of Guilderland High School and Voorheesville students.

Guilderland has no pool of its own.

The combined swim team merged 30 years ago, Hunt said at the school board meeting.

“It really has been a great relationship over the years,” he said.

This week, Hunt wrote in an email to The Enterprise, “We have had a longstanding verbal agreement to share the costs of the pool as it regards the Guilderville swim teams. We are in the process of formalizing the cost-sharing agreement.

“I anticipate that there will be some sharing of costs for the pool filter,” he continued, “but not a 50-50 [ratio] split because the pool filter runs 365 days a year, and our shared swim teams don't use the pool for the entire year.” 

“We will work with Guilderland to come up with a cost share for the filter that is a fair representation of the costs for the shared swim teams,” Hunt wrote.

“The pool repair is not inexpensive,” wrote board member Doreen Saia in an email to The Enterprise. “For that reason, an effort was conducted to confirm that the issue was thoroughly investigated, and the pool repair was required.”

Hunt told The Enterprise that the district plans to send out fliers to residents two or three weeks before the vote.

“This is a very reasonable cost and has no tax impact,” he said. “This is an appropriate time to use a bit of the capital reserve fund.”

He said that large-scale repairs must continue to be made, over time.

“Every so often, you’ve got to do these upgrades,” Hunt said. “We generally have a plan. The fund... mitigates the impact on taxpayers. We’re just trying to be prudent with the community’s resources and not overburden taxpayers.”
“If you let things go,” Hunt continued, citing an unrelated example, “little roof leaks become big roof leaks.”