BY JANE PRENDERGAST | ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER
WYOMING - People here have strong allegiances to where they swim.
The city's nearly finished with its plans for a new pool - a $3.4 million Family Aquatic Center.
City officials have given initial approval for the facility, which they plan to pay for with a 20-year bond. It'll be next to the current Wyoming recreation center on Springfield Pike, 200 feet outside the city limits into Woodlawn. Officials expect to hire a builder in July so the pool can open Memorial Day 2007.
But debate over the pool still brews among the 8,200 residents. Some have been harshly critical of everything about the city's process, including that the pool won't be centrally located and claiming that the decisions have been made without enough public input. About a dozen opponents spoke against the project at City Council's meeting last week.
"I'll say,'' said Dave Kaufman, a resident for 25 years. "The talk of the town the last month has been the pool.''
Someone said the new pool might stink because it's near Councilman Jim O'Reilly said he's been to the recreation center many times in the summer and "never smelled anything.''
In all the speeches, nobody mentioned a key fact - that a new city pool with the latest features and cheaper fees could threaten the other pool in the city, the private Wyoming Swim Club.
Debbie Bellman, a resident for almost 40 years, said she is a member of the private club. But she insisted that hadn't colored her thoughts about the public pool. She thinks the recreation center site is too far away from the center of the city and that officials aren't listening to constituents.
"I just feel it's not the right thing to do,'' she said.
Councilwoman Vicky Zwissler and City Manager Robert Harrison met with swim club leaders in 2004 to talk about working together. She said the then-president of the swim club wasn't interested.
The swim club opened first, in 1958, after residents raised money and did some of the labor themselves. Neighbors built it because, at the time, the only pools in the area were in Greenhills and at Coney Island. The city pool followed in the late 1960s. "There are deep-seated attachments to these facilities,'' Zwissler said.
Opponents want more chances to give council members their input.
Mayor David Savage said officials already have listened: "We just need to do it.''
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