Friends of the Pool prepare for future

As the sun is making its reappearance, and the snow is slowly but surely melting, all of us parents are breathing a sigh of relief: We can send our kids back outside! At last, liberation from our cabin fever. With warmer weather coming, our dreams of summer will soon be a reality. The kids will be home, as school is out for the summer, and it will be pure bliss for the first week, and then you think to yourself, “These kids are driving me crazy! When does the pool open??” Do not fear, the Odessa Friends of the Pool is here!

This year, the Odessa Friends of the Pool (FOP) is excited to announce that we are actively recruiting new members. In order to keep the Odessa swimming pool open and relevant, it is important to have a continuous cycle of parents and community members serving terms on the group’s board and committees. The group’s mission is to continue to raise funds to make improvements that will increase the efficiency of the Aquatic Center and reduce operating costs in order to keep the Aquatic Center a functional community asset. If your children enjoy going to the pool and you feel strongly about its presence in our small community, we ask that you please consider joining.

The Friends of the Pool group has been working together with the town of Odessa for 13 years. Together, we have worked to fund major repairs to the pool: Updating equipment, modernizing the bathrooms, installing an ADA-compliant lift, retrofitting a RenoSys PVC lining (which has saved large sums of money in terms of heating and chemicals). In addition, the group has invested $35,000 to level, replace and repair major portions of the concrete decking that had been deemed unsafe by the Health Department.

For 2017, the group has committed to replacing older and inefficient pool heaters and providing heat-retaining pool covers for all four pools. Also for this year, $10,000 has been pledged towards lifeguard wages to help keep the pool open the same days and hours as in previous summers. The group is also working with the Town of Odessa to hire an adult manager for the aquatic center this year. Please see the help wanted ad in this week’s newspaper.

If you are interested in becoming a member or would like more information about the Odessa Friends of the Pool, please check out our brand new Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/OdessaFOP/. Send us a message or simply “like” the page to keep up on our events and announcements.