Speaking as a dad, school board member wants work done on pool

By MATTHEW FERREIRA

January 16, 2014 10:10 AM

LAKEVILLE A School Committee member spoke as a parent last week in advocating improvements to the George R. Austin Intermediate School pool and the school district's swim program.

"I'm before you as a supporter of the pool and a parent who has two kids in swim programs tonight for this part of the meeting," David Davenport said to his peers on the School Committee last week from the podium usually used by guest speakers.

Mr. Davenport's concern, as he explained, was a short but considerable list of capital improvements to the district pool that he and other swim program supporters say are in dire need of being addressed.

"There's a number of things that we could talk about that range from small on up to larger things but there's three things that we've identified that we really want to make a big effort to get taken care of at this time," Mr. Davenport said. Using visual aids via a PowerPoint presentation, he pointed out an area of damaged tiling on the deck around the pool, cautioning that such damage could cause people to trip.

"In fact at the edge of the pool at the coping if you slipped your hand between the tile and the coping where the adhesive has come loose, you could tear that tiling up by sheets," said Mr. Davenport, later adding that the deck is still the original work from when the pool was built in 1974. According to the presentation, the tiling repairs are projected at a cost of $18,000 - $20,000.

The other two capital improvements covered in the presentation were updating the chemistry system which handles chlorine mixture into the water and repairing or perhaps replacing altogether the ventilation system for the air around the indoor pool which is located at George R. Austin Intermediate School.

"It's antiquated," said district swim coach and aquatics director Bret Pacheco of the chemistry or chlorine management system. "It's a system that was a great design when it started and now " it doesn't quite efficiently put the chlorine in the water the way it's supposed to and it doesn't manage it as well as it should."

Regarding the ventilation system around the pool, Mr. Pacheco explained that the high presence of chlorine in the air makes it difficult for swimmers to breathe and can often be observed coughing at practices and events. "There are days when you're in there to watch your kid swim or whatnot and the chlorine odor is so strong that you just want to run out of there because the air system just isn't handling it," Mr. Davenport said of his own experience.

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Speaking as a dad, school board member wants work done on pool