Is Memorial Pool as rundown as public is led to believe? Some say no

Neighborhood around pool believes
council is being misled with false info

It’s possible the La Crosse city council is about to vote on closing a decades-old pool on false information.

Certainly, that’s the implication from the Grandview-Emerson Neighborhood Association.

The group is fighting to keep Memorial Pool open and now has cited a list of what it claims are falsehoods used by city staff to make sure it closes for at least the summer.

“It’s clear what the goal has been for a long time with the pool and, in part, because there hasn’t been the kind of support needed for it,” Jacob Sciammas with the group said.

The letter to the right was written by some of those in the association. 

Regardless, it looks as though the city council is leaning toward closing the pool for summer because of a list of deficiencies that some consider dangerous.

“I think we’re just to the point now that there are too many hurdles to overcome,” La Crosse mayor Tim Kabat said. “There are the cross-connection issues, the loss of water, and nobody really knowing where it goes,” Kabat said. The pool is said to leak 18,000 gallons a day. “Those are pretty significant things.”

Among the assumptions Sciammas’ group claims are false, is that the pool could be fixed and opened again next summer.

Sciammas’ info says if the pool closes, its license will lapse and then will have to be brought up to code again to regain that license.

The La Crosse city council has been taking information received about the future of the pool at face value, but Sciammas suggests it should use a bit more skepticism.

He claims many of the claims about the pool by city staff are just myth. He believes the decision was made long ago to close the pool and all the rest of the information going to the city council simply fits that narrative.

“You’ve heard some very strong language by the park director that you’d have to find somebody else to open it,” Sciammas said. “And that doesn’t seem to suggest that we have a fair process in front of us.”

Among the false claims Sciammas cites is the one by city staff that the pool is not insurable. That claim is the one city council members are most likely to consider when voting on whether to close Memorial tonight. 

Word is out among those fighting to keep Memorial Pool open that tonight is the final decision. There has been an online drive to have neighbors show up at the council meeting tonight.

“One of the things I’d love to see, if we could, come up with some good answers in a short period of time, and then work out a way to phase it,” Kabat suggested. “I think that’s what the neighborhood has been talking about. A way to phase these repairs over a period of time.”

A recent study found Memorial Pool would likely be expensive to fix but a solid dollar amount has yet to be identified.