The Centralia City Council has agreed to form a committee to explore options for the creation of a new outdoor city pool.
The issue came up during the comments section of the meeting after some earlier comments had been made to the council about the desire to once again have an outside pool.
The committee will only be examining possibilities for a pool project and that there are no current plans or resolutions to move forward with creating a public pool.
Mayor Bryan Kuder said cost would be the biggest obstacle for the city to face in doing this, even with grant money.
“Carlyle got a grant for their pool. It was $450,000 and everybody is like why isn’t Centralia going to get that and build us a pool. People don’t understand, that $450,000 is about 1/10 of what a new pool cost. Now $450,000 would be a nice start. The average pool, I’m talking with a splash pad type configuration, you are talking about 4-6 million just in that. We’ve got a pool that’s no good. So instead of starting with a blank slate, we are going to have to spend the money to get rid of everything until we can even start.”
Kuder also noted Carlyle passed a sales tax increase to pay for their new pool. .
