Last week was a back and forth of rumors about the Lennox City Pool opening for the summer due to repairs needed. City employees were able to fix enough of the issues though by Monday, June 6th and the pool opened at 1 p.m. that afternoon. Lennox Councilman and chair of the Park and Rec committee Alan Ratliff said, “Hopefully physical things are done, so we can open and be safe.”
He commended the City street and water crew for their excellence in getting the pool readied.
It was a far cry from what was said on Tuesday, May 31 at the Lennox City Council meeting, at which time Ratliff said, “I will not approve the pool be open until these safety issues are addressed.”
During Tuesday’s meeting Pool Manager Dustin McLouth aired a long list of concerns. He said, “There are some things for safety reasons and some things for cleanliness reasons. Our backboard is completely out of date and the head brace does not stay on correctly, so if we were to have someone fall, get injured and we were to put them on that, it wouldn’t hold them the way it’s supposed to hold them in the first place. So that needs to be replaced immediately or we probably shouldn’t open the pool.
“The pool vacuum, last year it worked by the way, it worked in the end, but we went about a month and a half where it didn’t work and we were in the pool with a broom from a garage, sweeping the dirt to the side of the pool.
“The toilets in the girls’ bathroom, I don’t know if there was vandalism; Alan, you saw it this morning, there’s spray paint all over them; I believe there’s spray paint on one of the boys’’ toilets. And one of the toilets this morning did not flush correctly in the girls’ bathroom, and I know last year we had continuous issue with clogged toilets all summer long. I’d call Dave in. They just don’t have enough power at all. The urinals are absolutely disgusting and they don’t flush very well. And there is absolutely zero privacy with the bathrooms. Last year we put up curtains, I’ve been told every year they put up curtains, I can’t tell you the number of complaints I had from my staff, myself, my wife, and everyone else who came to the pool about having zero privacy whatsoever. I don’t think my guards ever used the rest rooms, I tried not to, we walked down to the park and used the rest rooms there. I know there were kids who point blank said, ‘we’ll just go in the pool then; can’t tell anyways.’ Because they are just that disgusting.
“There’s no hot water, which for a cleanliness reason is a huge problem if you’re trying to kill different kinds of germs I guess with the cleaner we use. The sinks don’t have hot water when you wash your hands. The hoses don’t have hot water for any type of cleaning.”
Ratliff interjected, “Some of the sinks can’t even turn on.”
McLouth continued, “That’s right. The sink in the boys’ bathroom is starting to fall off the wall, that needs to be fixed or put back on correctly.
“We had issues with the night lights at the pool last year, we had a break-in, I’ve heard there’s been break-ins like every year. But sometimes it turns on and sometimes it would not. We had a couple people last year want to do pool parties in the evening, which is kind of an extra thing, and we could not always get those [the lights] to work correctly, some nights have two lights on, three lights on, I don’t know why they didn’t [work].
“The baby pool overhang is starting to rot out, and there is a lot of growth on it. I don’t know if we just remove it or fix it. The baby pool, there are [storage] boxes in there that are broken and shattered. And then the pump — up until, apparently today — leaked. It worked at the beginning of last year, as summer went on it leaked, and I’ve been told, that every year it does the same thing, where it’s working right away and I don’t know, if it’s the wear and tear on that little machine of what goes on on the pool all year, but when that is not working correctly (as of right now I guess that it is) but when that doesn’t, that causes a huge mess all the way down the sidewalk and we had people slip and fall last year and we had to write up accident reports.
“The slide on the deep end of the pool is also leaking, I just went and turned it on before I came here, and that leaks all the way down to the sidewalk, all the way down to the road. like in the path for the park and that gets slippery as well, we had build up all summer long on those sidewalks. So that needs to stay shut off, or needs to be fixed.
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