Speakers labeled via automated voice-based diarization + AI name-matching against the city's official roster. Automated transcription can still mis-hear a name during fast speech (e.g. a rapid roll-call vote) -- clear near-misses are auto-corrected, but this is not manually verified line-by-line. Treat names as a strong best guess, not an official record.
[0:00] Mayor Morin: Call to order the City Council special meeting Tuesday, September 22nd, 2026. I'm all discombobulated already. Will the clerk please call the roll?
[0:11] City Clerk: Cancer Panti, cancer Daniels, here, pencil Helen, there, more here. I declare a quorum
[0:20] Mayor Morin: is present. We now join me for the Pledge of Allegiance. Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, there are no meeting minutes. We're moving on to awards, petition, and public comments. We have a workshop for the Brewer Municipal Pool. The chair recognizes City of Brewer City Manager
[0:57] Eric Glidden: Eric Glidden. Thank you, Mayor Morin. The purpose of today's workshop is to discuss the Brewer community pool, and just to kind of give you the form and the flow of how this workshop will go. What I want to start off with is kind of give you an overview of the financials. I want you to be able to see what our expenditures have been over the last 10 years, both operating and our capital expenditures, as well as just a snippet in time for when we start up the pool, so you understand what those costs are as well. And then what we're going to move into is we'll have a dis all Parks and Rec director when you door set is here, and our assistant director Grace because sodas because yeah it's here as well, and they'll be able to kind of give you some more information in terms of the current state of the pool, the current conditions, some of the issues that we've had over the last several years, and they'll be able to walk you through that. I also want to talk about some of the immediate needs, some of the immediate expenditures that are coming up if we were to start up the pool next year, some of the expenditures that we would have to undertake in order to get the pool up and running in an efficient manner. And then I want to move into the near the end of the meeting just kind of show you some potential solutions for the Brewer community pool, and then our recommendation of staff as we go forward. And so with that being said, I want to start with just some of the expenditures that we've incurred over the last several years, and just as a little bit of a background, this last summer we did have to shut down the community pool, because we found that water was leaking at a rate that was very significant. And I think we lost at least, what, six inches, eight inches of water in a short amount of time. So we knew that there was a pretty significant leak, and indeed there was a leak coming through a valve, which we'll talk a little bit about later. But for us, we didn't know where the water was going. We were very concerned from a safety standpoint that if the water was going down into the bottom of the pool and creating some sort of cavity, if that were to sort of give way, that there would be significant safety issues and hazards at hand. And so we really wanted to make sure that we were keeping our community safe. But I think what it revealed to us is, look, this pool is aging. There's some things that, some issues that would need to be resolved in order to mitigate those hazards to the public. And so what I, what we want to do today is to kind of give you an understanding of what the cost would be to get the pool back to a place where we feel confident, we feel right in allowing the public to use it. So that being said, I want to move briefly into some of the financials here. So you have, since this is, if you look at the graph, since 2000, and that's since 2015, on average we've been spending overall year-to-year. This is just our operating expenditures, mind you, right around on average $43,000 per year. This last year was fairly significant because we had, as I just mentioned, some equipment failures that had to be fixed. But as you can see, over the last 10 years, our operating expenditures are very significant. Now, this includes things such as the chemicals that go into the pool. This includes the water bill, the water that we have to use to fill up the pool every year, the chemicals, the staff, and any benefits that we offer to staff. So as you can see, just our operating expenditures are low. This isn't even capital. Just operating is very significant. Now, I don't have it on here because I don't think it's really worthwhile talking about the revenue, because the revenue in and of itself is very insignificant. Significant. The revenue just last year was about $4,500. So you don't have to be, you don't have to be, and you don't have to have an advanced degree to kind of figure out what the math is on that. So we're, you know, certainly when it comes to a community pool, you don't, you don't go into it expecting to make any money, obviously. But this kind of gives you a snippet, this kind of gives you a snapshot of what is going into the operation of the pool. So again, I'll be sending this to you so you can, you'll have all this information. This is just an overview of some of the capital expenses that we've incurred since 2009. And I'm not going to go through each one in particular, but I just want to point out, and we'll talk a little bit about this later, that in FY17, I'm sorry, FY16, we allocated $100,000 for the repaving of the pool and also to make some repairs to the headwall which is obviously very important at the far end of the pool that's the far end of the pool where you have the most pressure from the water and so that was seeing some deterioration and so that had to have some work done to it and so that work wasn't completed until fy 17 so you get a sense of what that cost was just shy of 80 000 for that work and then in FY 22 we had to install some new water lines pumps and filters to meet certain guidelines and I'll talk a little bit about this later too but you can see in FY 09 we actually had an engineering architectural study done on the concept plan done on the pool and that plan that report actually identified several deficiencies in the operation of the pool several not only deficiencies but safety concerns as well where in fact we're not up to code one of the more significant ones and i haven't been able to find if this is if this repair was done or not but the actual drain was identified as a significant safety concern and i don't believe that drain was ever replaced do you know the answer to that whitney i don't i don't think that it was i could not find any anything that would suggest that was done and so that remains a significant safety concern personally for me and I know it is for Parks and Rec as well and that's just one of many others being you know ADA accessibility and so on and so forth so since 2009 our capital expenses are very significant just shy of $190,000 in capital expenses alone on the pool so that we wanted to give you a snapshot of what it takes to start up the pool each year. As you can see our total startup costs are just shy of $11,000 but that includes you know painting the pool each year, the chlorine, the shock, the stabilizer, all of the chemicals that goes that go into starting up the pool. Now this year we had to put 67,600 gallons into the pool, but that was because we were losing water at a very significant rate. And so it typically wouldn't be that high, but that gives you an idea of, you know, the kind of cost that we have to incur if we do have such a leak, if we were to have such a leak in the future. Any questions so far in any of that? Well, it was identified in 2009 and that with that report, but I have not been able to find anything. I'm not saying, if I'm not saying definitively know that it wasn't done. But I can't see any, I can't seem to find any work orders or anything like that would suggest that the work that the drain was actually replaced. So for me, that's that's a significant concern as we go forward, but it was 2009 that was identified. So what I'd like to do now is welcome Whitney Dorsett, our parks and rec director, which by the who, by the way, is doing a phenomenal job. So thank you for everything that you are doing and continue to do. What she's going to do is kind of go through some of the issues that we've had. She's going to identify some of the key pieces of equipment that are, have had issues, that are currently having issues, and I don't know, she's got a couple of funny stories behind a couple of them. So I'm going to turn the welcome into the, to the city, I'm going to turn it over to Whitney and
[9:46] Whitney Dorsett: when I'll progress the slides as we go along. Okay, so afternoon everybody. Whitney Dorsett. I just want to touch on a couple things that he had shared prior to jumping in on this. Going back to the expenses for 2026, we're looking at the pool paint. Those buckets were cut in half to extend the pool paint, and in the slides that we're going to show you, it didn't quite take. So thinking in, you know, preparation for 2027, we're going to have to double that bucket of paint. It didn't stay very well, it wasn't put on efficiently, so it peeled immediately. And Grace did a great job every morning coming in, getting in there, you know, knees to waist to kind of caulk some of the stuff and deal with
[10:33] Eric Glidden: some of the cracks. And, Whitney, can you remind me, and the painting, that is done every year, is that correct? Correct. Yeah, that's what I thought, okay. So
[10:44] Whitney Dorsett: they cut it. So they added... 50% water.
[10:49] Speaker E (unidentified): Yeah. I believe
[10:53] Speaker F (unidentified): That they have always cut it at some degree. I think that what had happened this past year is that they were possibly trying to save some money and not have to order another bucket of paint because they pre-ordered paint all that had been delivered in the previous fiscal year. Delivered in the... Yes.
[11:10] Whitney Dorsett: So another piece to highlight is that as Eric shared me coming in brand-new, there was significant water loss. We had a couple people come in to try to find that loss to no success, and I also called outside of this area, and several people wouldn't touch the pool. They said we don't operate with that pool, this is a different type of pool, we don't, we're not acknowledged on it, so they said that they wouldn't actually come and help us. We ended up getting somebody to come in, and we will share where we found the leaks, which was more than one, but we were losing rate, a rate of three to four gallons a minute. The operations prior to Grace and I were a seven-day program, if you will, so people were coming in at least two or three times during the weekend each day to check chlorine levels, check the water levels, and when they check the water levels, the fire hose went on or the garden hose went on. So from my knowledge of the prior experience with the pool for probably the past four to five years, it's been leaking water to this rate. I don't believe it has, but prior to the way I was trained on this pool was to turn on water each morning, so it was, it's
[12:31] Eric Glidden: been heating and a few and two and maybe you can touch on this a little bit, Whitney, but you know, you think about it, you know, the chemicals and the water ratio, it's all about ratios, right. So if you have water that's leaking and you're putting a certain amount of chemical in, that could potentially have some, an adverse impact on people as they're entering into the pool. Correct. If you're not careful. Right. I mean, you guys did a fantastic job. And fortunately, we didn't have any issues. But, you know, when you have a water leak like that, it's not just the leak. It's OK. Now it becomes a significant issue in trying to maintain the appropriate chemical levels.
[13:05] Whitney Dorsett: Yes, and to his point, Grace and I are CPOs, so that's certified pool operators, and we were up there quite frequently. On my first three weeks here, I was at the pool. That's what I was doing, getting at the pool, testing the water, changing chemicals, ordering chemicals, just to keep the chlorine levels at a place that is safe for people to swim. We did try to bust our butts to at least get our first swim session through, which was the first four weeks of our eight-week session, and we were just shy a couple days. But at that point we had to call it because we couldn't keep the levels going, and we were flying through chlorine, and you would fly through chlorine and chemicals with that rate of water loss, and have it a fire hose on for 16 hours on a Sunday to make sure we get the levels up for a safe swim on Monday. So yes, but touching upon that, and then the other thing I wanted to share was the pool operations cost for this current fiscal year that is in here is only the four weeks of operation. So bear in mind we didn't have half of our season. That's the operation cost that we've had, we
[14:14] Mayor Morin: missed four weeks. So four weeks was 56 000,
[14:18] Whitney Dorsett: and what we did leading up to that starting in april and may, thank you. Yes, okay, so i just wanted to touch on those types of things, and then we can get into the rest of the pool. All right, so
[14:31] Eric Glidden: So current pool issues, I'm going to go through and just kind of show a series of photos that Whitney and her staff have taken of just some of the deterioration of the pool itself, some of the equipment, and maybe you can kind of share some of those stories with us as we go along here.
[14:47] Whitney Dorsett: So this is our headwall. This is the headwall that we had put $100,000 aside for. You see how bumpy it is. You see the flakes of paint. All those bumps are patches and repairs. repairs. So I was not here when this was redone with that $100,000, I think being 70 something thousand and change. But in the past four years, this is what's happened to it. So it didn't really stay and it wasn't sturdy. I don't know if that is because of the winter seasons being harsh in Maine sometimes or just maintenance and repair or general wear and tear. But this is the head wall that we put that money to, and again it is it is have some significant leaks and cracks in it. So again grace and the previous directors that were there did a lot of work to try to patch that up and then repaint that, but it's it's just a fighting battle. So also showing this just the paint piece, so again what they did with the paint was they cut it in half and they rolled it instead of squeegeeing it. I don't know why the difference was done this year than prior years, but many of the staff who were out there, which is everybody hands-on deck from directors down to part-time staff to our parks people, everyone's out there painting that pool, said that they felt it was a better way to do it, the squeegee way, than the rolling of the paint, especially the staff that maybe never even painted before. You all know if you have a paintbrush and it's thin, you're pushing on that 's not the paint you want you want it to have a good amount of paint to roll so we had found that there are significant spots with less paint water is getting into those cracks because this is a paved pool and it's causing cracks so the photo on the right side is actually showing and I think Grace did this one this is the caulking and repair so this is like a putty that you break off a stick, you up
[17:00] Speaker F (unidentified): there when we were operational, but there was probably close to 15 spots like that where I had to go in, even go like up to my chest and get that putty put through those cracks.
[17:14] Eric Glidden: The other thing I'll point out too, and I'll just, I don't know, Dan, if you can kind of sit behind me, but you see how you have water here and then it kind of moves in, right? That's because you have bulging, I think, underneath the pavement, and so that's just from natural, I believe, just, you know, frost heaving and settling and so on and so forth. And so that's obviously going to have a wear and tear under cement as well. So you, I think that's, we didn't even intend to show this, but I think it shows it very well actually, that you have kind of a hump there showing where that, where that heat is and just that natural, and that's just only one location on the pool. You see how there's a
[17:53] Whitney Dorsett: a point, see that on the right side, the water is focusing down there. So on the opposite sides of those there is a race, so it's sloping towards that area. Again, this could just be the years of that pavement because we are going on year 10 and it's supposed to last between 10 and 8 years. So it could be based on that, it could be a lot of different things, but it is present, and there is different larger patches in this pool where that heaving has come, that people have had to come in within the past 10 years and repatch that. But the next slide is also going to show some puttying. So these are our jets, in all intents and purposes, where our water comes out. Every single one of them has putty around them. They're loose, and again, they kind of get puttied, and then painted over. And also you can see this one has tape, but they do every single one of them. And another thing to talk about, this is that these should be under water, and we couldn't get to that point at all with the amount of water loss that we were having. When I came in, I would say the highest one, which is on our eight foot side of our pool, should be underwater. And when I was there, it never got closer to maybe six or seven inches below it. The one time that we actually did, which is how we discovered the leak, is it got over.
[19:28] Speaker E (unidentified): How high is the top?
[19:32] Whitney Dorsett: Because that marking was not in there. So that was the other piece about the pool, is that it's a very unique shape, it's a very unique design, and it's very hard to figure out the gallons that are in that pool based on the lack of marking and the depth of the pool. Sure, well, so it should be coming water out, and then what we do is we pull water from the main drains on the bottom to do our backwash.
[20:20] Speaker F (unidentified): Chlorine dissolves when it is exposed to air like that, so when the jets are spewing out above the water, we are constantly losing chlorine. So that's another part of the battle that we were fighting in trying to get that water above those jets.
[20:35] Speaker E (unidentified): Just because
[20:39] Whitney Dorsett: of the overall air and the chlorine levels, it wouldn't. But again, that's just chlorine not getting into the pool. So you put in 50 gallons or 50 pounds of chlorine, but not all of that's getting in there. So your ratios are off with, again, the equations that you're figuring out from mathematics to get into that pool. The other piece to add to that, which is the topic we're talking about with the chemicals, is that you base how much chlorine and how much other chemicals you're putting in based on how much water you have in the pool. But if we're dropping at, you know, at one point we were dropping within a 24 hour period with 10 inches of water, and that was like on the weekends with it not being touched. Now any pool should be able to sit at its level and lose very minimal water, maybe an inch and a half, because It's outside, so you have the air, I'm pulling it up and stuff like that, but other than that, you should not be losing water. So I think that's why the previous people that were in there were doing that on Saturdays and Sundays in their time. I mean, I was, I was told like I have to be married to the pool, it's a seven days, eight days thing, and I was like, whoa, really. So but that was what they were doing to keep it operational. And when you
[21:55] Eric Glidden: came in, I mean, that was like priority number one was the pool, and you were spending an incredible amount of time, I know that for a fact, you were spending a incredible amount of time just getting that pool up and going, and you identified
[22:06] Mayor Morin: a lot of issues right off the bat. Yeah, how many years old is this pool again? I mean, it's that we need to do something. Yeah, I was thinking it was close to 60
[22:14] Whitney Dorsett: years old now. We did have three, the other one is gone, and then the other one, which I know the history of box port, right, you fall over in this path unfortunately this year, I'll set for the next one. Yes, okay, all right. So these are different features of the pump room. I am not sure how long these have been around. I know the pump room was redone a few years ago, about like six or seven years ago, but these different things are human operational as opposed to being automatic. So we have the chlorinator on the left. The chlorinator sits about this high above my head currently. Grace is about the same height as me, so as in the past people we have to lift and put chlorine above our heads over into this structure. We have a lot of different things that we use for ppe to help protect us, but it doesn't always work, and again, you don't want to hold 50 pounds of a chemical over your head where you can't see it and control it. You can probably see in the photo that there's masks hanging up and there's different things right there. It's also right next to the eyewashing station and that eyewashing station definitely needs to have a service and probably replace this rust. I went and looked at it in August because it was just on the list for stuff to look at. It was barely operational, the water is coming out very low, you have to go turn on the water in a different part of the pump room to get water to the eyewash, so if you're in an extreme emergency, that's probably not what you're thinking. So again this chlorinator basically is a bucket, and then it has two facets on the side that you have to untwist and open, and then close. And you got to make sure you do that because it will overflow, and it does it frequently, just based on pressure of the water. The second valve next to it is the chlorinator valve, so that is on the right side of the bucket, and that is all based on human touch and feel. Now this valve doesn't have any markings of how much water flow is going in, the pressure of the water. When I was trained on the pool, it was put it at this spot, so turn your hand to eleven o'clock, and that's where it should be. But with that being said, when we were losing so much water, that doesn't play into this. You have to finagle this, and they fiddle with it, but you also can't open the core here because once you open that, lose your pressure, and that's chemicals again popping up and blowing in your face, which you don't want to do. So that was a point of Grace and I's little bane of our existence, like, how are we going to do this? And then if you don't have enough water coming in, the chlorine doesn't dissolve as well, and it doesn't get into the pool. The one all the way to the right is our water primer. So when we turn off the pool, which we had to turn off the pool, we lost the water from this four circle like cylinder. Do you guys see where that is? So that is our primer opening gasket, if you will, and the water gets drained from that because we're no longer having an open, so we have to fill and put water in there with a hose and fill it from that drain to our main drain, which is actually on the other side of the chlorinator. You can see the little tab on the left, so that's probably a good nine feet, and filling that entire tube, that big gray tube, to be able to start the pool. Unfortunately, we were unable to open the primer, so I don't know if it was pressure or dust or dirt. I did call in the previous director, and he came and tried to help us, so I eventually sat in the water that was on the floor and had to kick it open to be able to start our pool again. We've had to do that a total of three times, and that's the only way to open it. So that's one of those little stories I like that every Day is not the same, you know, it's just a big learning curve. So the next slide, Eric, if you will. This is also some of the things that we can touch upon that I came in to learn. The fan on the left side, it stays on 24 7 while the pool is operational, which is meaning it's on even on the weekends. Because if it does not, there is a likely chance that box will overheat and trip. In the previous years, that's what they found. So that's been there, or a different fan has been there for years, 24 7.
[27:06] Mayor Morin: One also not in this photo, I kind of cannot believe that. I mean, I will say I have been in council since 2020, and I know we need a new pool, like we need a new pool. I knew it was bad, but I did not know it was this bad.
[27:26] Speaker G (unidentified): It's also the fact that at least I know that past parks and rec did a huge amount out of very little, and they made things work that should have never worked. And I have the utmost respect for what they kept going for years, but it shows.
[27:47] Mayor Morin: How much they did with how little. Where's the duct tape? I feel like that's coming next.
[27:54] Whitney Dorsett: I'm sure it's there. To touch upon that, those things that they did, they're just worn out at this point. Do you know what I mean? And you can't do it again because the issues that they're trying to patch are much bigger now. I have a feeling they would figure it out though, not that they should. So to add to the fan piece, there is a box fan that is suspended from the Raptors that is also on, it's just not in this photo. It's actually behind the door to come in. Also, while the pool is open and the public is there, we were told to keep the pump room door open to help with the pool. I had pushed back a bit about saying about the safety of it, but the lifeguards knew, so they kept an eye on it, but we did operate with that, with that door being open. And again, I don't feel like that was the best solution, but again, I didn't want to shut down the pool with people in it, and that's that. So please picture sure.
[29:04] Speaker F (unidentified): Looking at that fan picture again, if you guys look at the ground in there, you can see that there's actually algae growing on the floor in there because there's no drainage. They decided to drill some holes, probably about yay big, in the floor, and that is the only drainage that we have in that room, and that room is constantly wet between filling up the chlorinator with the hose, same hose that we use to fill up the primer. You have to turn it on from all the way over here behind the pump, so you have. To reach behind the pumps, drag the hose out, and there's no really way to good stop it because you can't put us like a trigger on it because it doesn't come out fast enough, and we're working on a time crunch to fill that pool, so we definitely have algae growing on the
[29:48] Whitney Dorsett: floor in the pump room. It's also the same spigot for the eyewash. Yes. Okay, so this is an OSHA
[29:56] Mayor Morin: approved? Not one thing have you said. I feel like this, and there's more I see possibly codes.
[30:04] Whitney Dorsett: Yeah, so I actually did get in touch with main code to talk about this because again this is a new pool to me, and I was very concerned with some of the operations that were happening, and as a new CPO like I have fresh out of class, I started Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I was gone in Portland learning about pools, and I started back up here, so I also got to reach out to my instructor for there to help with some assistance to get us to a point to again try to at least get through part of the season, but the gentleman with the code they had came earlier in the season and it passed, so he said just reach out to me if you need help, and that's kind of where we were. But Grace, I'm going to let you speak about these two other photos because you worked with the company that came in and discovered our leaks. So these two, sorry, these two last
[30:58] Speaker F (unidentified): photos on the right hand side are the two valves that had the leaks in them. We had somebody come out and look at them, and they couldn't figure it out. I had one guy come out, and it took him 15 minutes to figure out where the leaks were coming from. These valves and these pipes are our backwash pipes, so with the filters we have giant sand filters that filter out all of the gunk in the pool, and then you have to backwash it, push the water back the other way to clear said filters, so we have to flip these valves. So you see the position that they're in now is the locked position. Before the pool guy came in and found where the leaks were, I had been told that just to get those levers as close to closed as you possibly can because nobody was strong enough to actually get them to close, and like I physically had to push my whole body up against that thing to try and get it as close as possible, and I never was, and that's for both of them. Both of them were unable to fully close, and that was part of why we are having a leak. Once he did get those closed, it was still leaking tremendously. Those are the valves that he recommended that we fix, and I believe those prices were not
[32:13] Speaker E (unidentified): shared yet. I have a question. So there's no underground leaks, it's just what's up there? Just those ones right there. Okay. Well, that's good. Yes.
[32:20] Speaker F (unidentified): So he came in and he unscrewed the rivets on the right side of that, not the blue part, but the next about the next joint afterwards and it was dumping water like probably a gallon in 30 seconds amount so it was a tremendous amount and it soaked the entire room so to add
[32:42] Whitney Dorsett: to your point about the leaks in the ground we don't know we didn't have anybody go through that
[32:47] Speaker E (unidentified): but don't they test the pressure he just did this yeah you would really have to dig up all of
[32:54] Speaker F (unidentified): those pipes if I'm being completely honest to find out if anything was going wrong underground
[32:59] Whitney Dorsett: just because of the sheer size of that pool and the way that the water was the rate of water flow so this was the main you know target we also had some drainage issues from our main drain and our main drain is actually just below the electrical box right there
[33:17] Speaker G (unidentified): and you have no gauges on these to gauge that's why they can't tell if there's any other leaks because there are no gauges to see what the pressure is in those items so our gauges are only
[33:27] Whitney Dorsett: on our filters okay and we just see from those filters what the pressure is and then we do a backwash yeah traditionally a backwash for this size pool with the operations it has we should only do one about once a week and eventually we had to do it every other day but with those back washers we were losing inches of water like five to six inches and that would make sense because these are cast iron valves and so just even trying to do it that's going to hurt your hand but we couldn't get them fully shut the electric box looks good
[34:02] Speaker H (unidentified): yeah as long as the fan keeps running all set yes all right so these are some
[34:10] Eric Glidden: of the current equipment upgrades that are like more immediately needed so sand filter, if we're to, you know, be up and operational next year, this is excluding, you know, the need to pave the pool, which we'll talk about here momentarily. But new sand filter, right around $2,000. New valves to fix. Can I say something about the sand filter?
[34:34] Whitney Dorsett: So there are four in there. The newest one doesn't work and hasn't been operational all season. I believe it stopped working at least last year. So it sits there dormant it wasn't repaired or fixed but that's the newest one that was purchased and it just sits there I can actually add to that because
[34:53] Speaker F (unidentified): I was the one who shut it off because it was continuously leaking it was I in our previous administration they just kind of told us that 's just been a constant problem ever since they got put in they called someone out to fix it got fixed for maybe a couple of days and then it continued to leak to the point where we had a tupperware container that lived underneath the valve to try and catch some of that water and then we i was told just to shut it off because it wasn't worth it anymore and it was the pool would run fine without one of our filters. And
[35:31] Eric Glidden: then the other, the other piece too that was already touched upon by Whitney and Grace is the automatic chemical feeder. I feel like there's, that's an area where there can be significant, well, you know, you introduce human error into it, and the fact that you have a water, right now we have a water loss, or have a water loss, having an automatic chemical feeder could significantly assist Parks and Rec staff in their operation of the pool and just kind of create more efficient operations. So if we were to go that route, certainly something that I would want to consider in a future year. You want
[36:13] Whitney Dorsett: me to add to that? Yes, please. Okay, so the automatic chemical theater also is in real time. So the state of Maine has a mandatory three-time check of chemicals in a pool that's operational. So originally that was what we did, and then we realized, you know, doing it between 6 and 7 a.m., around lunchtime, and then four when the pool closes was too much of a lead time, so we had to start coming in more. So it was Grace and I'm like, you go to the pool at an hour, you go to the pool in an hour, and then we taught our lifeguards, because you don't have to be a CPO to test, you do have to be a CPO to put chemicals in a pool and touch chemicals. So then we were touching our lifeguard. So again, me as a new staff member and director of the department wasn't just there the whole time because there were so many other things that I had to touch upon, and so that kind of takes out that time for the staff. But still having staff do it three times a day, that's still a requirement, but this would help us. So when we were losing that water, this would rectify that, would be able to test that, put more chemicals in it, put more whatever that needed to stabilize it and get it to the level where we are in a safe space. Was there
[37:26] Speaker E (unidentified): there backup for the lifeguard while he was testing the water? Was there anybody else they
[37:30] Whitney Dorsett: Tested at lunchtime shut down for an hour. Okay yeah but also yes every yeah there's five lumps there's always one other lifeguard that isn't watching the pool that's a 15 minute break so they go around every 15 minutes the whistle is blown. I don't know if you know all this but it's been a long time since okay yeah the whistle's blown and they switch spots every 15 minutes to keep them alive and looking so there's always one person that has a 15 minute break and they are not technically needed. But they've been emergency there in the gate that's cool thanks yeah so.
[38:04] Eric Glidden: I want to talk briefly about the need for repaving so we are I think we're coming up on year 10 of paving so it was last paved in 2017. The cost at that time was 63 500 and just to kind of give you some perspective the time before that lasted for about 15 years was under it was actually under $30,000 at the time so what we're looking at now our current estimate to pave the pool to mill the entire bottom to a depth of three inches and remove the top inch along the slope would come in right around a hundred twenty thousand dollars is that a current rates for gas.
[38:46] Mayor Morin: That's current yep is there another option because we're only two in the state now is there another option for a pool absolutely yeah and we'll go over.
[38:56] Eric Glidden: Some of those briefly here so we're up against that right now like that is the most immediate need that we're running into because as Whitney mentioned there is already some cracking you're having to fill cracks with putty and so on and so forth so hundred twenty thousand dollars to repave the pool within the next year maybe two years so the pool life span.
[39:20] Whitney Dorsett: Expand is at its max at this point with the with the paving and just as a thinking down the line and timeline this project needs to be paved in the fall in the fall so it allows the oils to you know secrete and fume and all that stuff so when you do paint it you're not fighting the battle of.
[39:40] Speaker F (unidentified): That because it would just it'll just peel off it also will cause the actual asphalt to bubble which is a problem that we faced when we were filling it earlier this summer. It got so bad to the point that when we were filling it that I would have to go up with a screwdriver and stab a bubble so that it would get rid of all the bulging that was occurring.
[40:02] Speaker G (unidentified): There's a great bubble of what was it 2000 and something at the bottom of the pool actually bubbled up. Yeah I can't remember. I heard the stories about it was quite a quite a process so that's what we're looking at for the
[40:18] Eric Glidden: next for the next year you know we that would have to be put into the cip in next year's budget if we were to continue operation of the pool so and the headwall which would be in the headwall
[40:29] Whitney Dorsett: which would be that 'd be a different cost exactly entirely exactly so now I want to move
[40:35] Eric Glidden: into potential solutions okay and so just kind of as a caveat here as a side note like I why we are not advocating for any one of these, okay? This is just to kind of give you an idea of what could be a particular price level, okay? That is the only intent of this. This is not saying we think that you should do this right now, all right? We have a solution that we've kind of developed that we think is a good one, and we'll talk about that near the end, but this is just kind of to kind of show you what you could pay for and what it what it could look like and so Whitney has worked with a pool manufacturer and they sent over some quotes and they sent over some pictures and different things and so we're going to show you some of these again not advocating just to kind of give you some perspective at this point okay I'll let you I'll let you kind of talk about these because you had contact with
[41:31] Whitney Dorsett: the vendor but sure so these are just different things that I actually had him give us for 2026 to 2025 what is currently happening within the country what are people asking for what are they looking for so if you look at this like our neighboring town in Bangor there's water slides in here there's also a shallow end that is a larger shallow end for kids and parents to be able to you know operate and play with in a safe manner but also have a deep end and this particular facility was done from the bottom up at this price we already have a space and we already have some things in place but this is just an example of the higher end what an outdoor pool could cost and again the waters edge
[42:18] Eric Glidden: aquatic design that's the name of the company that's correct yes yeah so if you wanted to look on your own that's the name of the company waters edge aquatic design so
[42:28] Whitney Dorsett: This is another one. This is, I would say, more on the lines of what we've kind of done with programming and operations of the pool. This would also allow lap swim, which is something that we don't do and doesn't really fit with the design of the pool. It's actually probably a little bit dangerous to do lap swim based on the slopes of the pool going into the bottom and the deep depths, and also the water not being at the levels that it needs to be. But this also shows you another budget of how you could do this again. This is from start to finish with the fencing, with the lighting, with all the other nice little features that were put into it. Does that include the slide to that budget? It does, and that's a new pump room and which obviously was all the new fixings for that, but also a new bathhouse. I mean, you could offer like, I
[43:19] Speaker E (unidentified): know a lot of the older people that live off of Chamberlain Street go to the Y and things like that for lap swimming. They might like that. I came from a
[43:26] Whitney Dorsett: previous recreation department where if the pool was busy from 6 a.m to 9 p.m, that's where my kids learned to swim, and we had lap swim, we had aquatics exercise classes, we did flicking floats where we brought in our big jumbo screen, which we know we now have at the rec, and we did family events. You could put in the non, what's the word I want, like non-hazard bubbles and foam parties. You can do birthday parties, but that's when the pool is at a space where we know it's operational. Right now the pool operates from 9 to 4 Monday through
[44:02] Speaker E (unidentified): Friday, right? But you could have it earlier for older people, and just for
[44:14] Eric Glidden: perspective too, and I think when you kind of touched on this earlier, but right now our pool is only open for eight weeks out of the year. Yes, eight weeks. And so let's think about when you think about eight weeks and the cost that we've put into the expenses that we put into the pool for those eight weeks is very significant. The other thing that we've discussed, and again not necessarily advocating for it right now, but in order to expand the season, heating the pool would be an option too if we were to do an outdoor design like something like this. So you know, and so in other words, we could open it early June after Memorial Day and then close it right around Labor Day if we have
[44:53] Speaker E (unidentified): that capability. So that price also includes all the concrete work and so
[45:02] Whitney Dorsett: Again, just another example of what they have done in the past, and this is outside of the tennis court and pickleball, what they have put together. Also the multiple places of shading, green space for families to go on picnic. I know that is popular over at the Brewer space, but there's also a very limited space for parents to sit and be in the shade and have picnics with their kids. And so this one I put in, which is a lower end size pool, and I put the dimensions and the volume of the gallons because I wanted to give you guys an example of something that is manageable, very manageable, and it is clearly hundred thousand gallons, two hundred thousand pounds less than what we would operate with, which is something that would be manageable for the staff. Also putting in again another shallow area for kids to play. You can also do senior aerobics or doll aerobics, kids aerobics, while allowing everybody to be able to do the things that they want to do. There is a little basketball hoop in there that's on the shallow end. There is one slide that actually is marked off and it's still in a shallow area where people can go in and stand up, and then there's an also deep end side where people can swim, where they want to use the diving board, but also allows laps. It's a little smaller, but again just another example of an option for it, and these would all include a DA accessibility to. Absolutely. So on this too, it's very small, but if you see the basketball hoop on the left side further up the left, that is a lift. Yep, that is a
[46:41] Mayor Morin: lift, and that is also included in the cost. And how does this compare to the
[46:47] Whitney Dorsett: the size of what we are right now? Again, we have a 250 000 gallon pool, okay, and this is 63 000 gallons.
[46:57] Speaker H (unidentified): It looks a little small, but so yeah, certainly compared to the others it's certainly
[47:01] Speaker E (unidentified): certainly much smaller. Yeah, I mean the pre, the price difference between obviously not the first one, but like the other two, yeah, aren't really far off from. Yes, so this one was done this spring.
[47:13] Whitney Dorsett: Yeah, and then the one previously that we looked at was done in 2022, which is at the price point of this now, so that would probably be, that design would be a little higher, but yes, yep. The other thing to keep in mind with the current operation of the pool is from nine to noon it's just swim lessons, so it's swim lessons from nine to noon Monday through Friday, and then from one to four it's open swim, and open swim consists of our two summer camps, so as much as we've talked about, you know, the senior Population being free, we don't really see them up there because there's 60 to 80 kids running around that pool, and that might not be a space that they feel comfortable. They like coming early.
[48:00] Speaker E (unidentified): Though so if we opened earlier, I think they would definitely be there, and then
[48:05] Whitney Dorsett: that also plays into staffing lifeguards and getting lifeguards, enough lifeguards to be able to open in an operation that is expanded. So I think that's why the previous people and directors operated the way they were because it was hard getting their goods.
[48:21] Mayor Morin: Whitney, do you know how many, how many kids we teach every year in our community?
[48:28] Whitney Dorsett: Yes, I did run those numbers, so we have, yeah, let's do quick math. I believe we had 96 kids in the first four weeks, so we have eight kids in the session between four sessions in the time frame that allows three groups of kids, so we're probably just under 200 for the in the eight weeks. It's a lot of kids in Berwick that
[48:56] Speaker I (unidentified): learned how to swim here, right? That's wonderful. Yeah, that's always been on top of my list of any sport in school because it's not just teaching kids. It's a sport, but teaching them a life-saving skill, which is very important. I grew up around the pool. My daughter got taught in the Brewer pool. My wife got taught at the Bangor pool when we were growing up. We met at the pool. I coached diving for 16 years at the Y, so I've been around the pool a lot and understand the importance of the pool in the community. So I'm glad that we're taking a look at this now. I'm so sorry that we did not know the shape the pool was in. We knew that it was in bad shape, but oh my goodness.
[49:51] Speaker G (unidentified): Well, I took it as my council project last year to start a 10-year plan. So we started what, last? What, January, no, this January, last winter at what, December? Meeting to start putting together a 10-year plan, so right in the middle of doing that, it all did this. So it's your fault. Yeah, I shouldn't have talked about it, but like it was looked at in 1985 for an indoor pool, it's the picture that hung in Mike's office forever. It was looked at again like 10 years after that, and then it was looked at again like 10 years after that, so every 10 years they keep looking at it, and it was kind of when we talked about it, 's kind of our goal did not let it go past. that 10 years because it's antiquated it didn't function at any level that it should the one thing that I get and I know we'll hit on it the number one request is a splash pad number one hands down like oh look at that yeah first thing and then when it got posted that the pool was closed that was like yes the number one comment but back seven years ago that was when I was running it was the first thing someone said to me was can we get a splash pad it's the number one thing I've heard so yeah It's a big priority I think, it you know, so.
[51:18] Eric Glidden: These systems here when you kind of depend on your expertise and you can maybe you can kind of talk about like what a recirculating system is and some of these other you know a couple of these other systems. But this is again not advocating for a particular design, but what this does is kind of shows you what you how you could spend money, what you could get for that money. So this design here 625, it's a recirculating, so I assume that means it's a.
[51:42] Whitney Dorsett: Recycling system wouldn't correct, so what it is, it uses a large collection of water underground, so there's built and basically a large tank, and that's where the disinfectant of the water comes in, and it cycles through. This is it saves on a massive amount of water being used, and it often just with the notes that I've looked at and people I spoke to, it also meets a lot of strict local building code and ordinances, so.
[52:12] Speaker E (unidentified): If we were going to have a splash pad, would that be more open and detached from like the pool area so that people could just.
[52:19] Whitney Dorsett: Go, that's that's an open conversation here. I would recommend that because if you're inside the gate of the pool and people are in there, you need a life.
[52:27] Speaker E (unidentified): Card, but if you had something that off-campus somewhere, people could just go.
[52:35] Speaker G (unidentified): Inside the same, would you need a gate around, especially most cities do you see.
[52:46] Speaker E (unidentified): Them and there's no, yeah no, I know what they're talking about, but she's still referenced a gate around the splash pad, and usually you don't see them with a.
[52:56] Eric Glidden: Think if it's close to, you know, obviously, if it's close to a street, like a major street, like if we were to put it on that same property, which we're going to talk about here shortly, but if you were to do, like, absolutely, I would, you would have to. You would have to have a fence of some sort.
[53:09] Speaker G (unidentified): Safety-wise, just by a state street.
[53:11] Whitney Dorsett: But it also helps, too, with the parents. I mean, it could be an open gate, you know what I mean? But it also helps with those kids because depending upon your size of your splash pad, again, I have a 5-year-old and a 7-year-old, so we live by splash pads all summer. They can take off, and you can't see them. Yeah, so just helping those parents have that reassurance that, you know, they can get again. It doesn't have to be locked, and it can be just an open. There is
[53:32] Speaker I (unidentified): actual no gate, it's just fence. An alternative to a gate that I've seen is a wall, a rock wall or design wall, to separate the parking area and cars from the splash pad, so people can still look over and see their kids, things like that, and easy access if you have to quickly get to someone instead of
[53:53] Speaker E (unidentified): running around. Yeah, that is true, because if they go at one side and you're on the
[54:01] Whitney Dorsett: other, you know, to be mindful of that again, and I'm in the thick of it right now, is that if the walls built, the kids will go climb on it. Yeah, and they're
[54:10] Mayor Morin: gonna be wet. Yeah. Yes, is there anything in here, and I'm just curious, because I know you just mentioned it, that there was a discussion however many years ago for an indoor facility. Have we looked at that as a potential option?
[54:30] Eric Glidden: Talk about the cost of that in terms of design, not necessarily. Well, let me back up. Yes, the study that was done in 2009 did look at both an outdoor option and an indoor option. The indoor option, I believe, was attached to the Parks and Rec building. So there's a slide that will kind of show you what that looks like.
[54:53] Speaker G (unidentified): The 1985 one actually made it come off. Do you know where the entrance is in the basement part or the downstairs? To the parking lot. On the left side. You're looking at the front. Yes. The daycare entrance. Where the daycare entrance is. That pool went right off the side of that and took up that part of the parking lot. And I think the ultimate goal was, and I talked to Joe Ferris about this once, but it was a long time ago. He was kind of pushed behind it, that the parking would move up, like the rest of the parking would just shift upwards, so they had worked on that. They had designs, they had it drawn out, everything, and it just never went through. So I think it went to, it didn't it go to a public vote? I think it failed. Yeah, and I don't remember, it wasn't my, I mean, it was minimal compared to what it would be
[55:39] Speaker H (unidentified): now to put in a facility like that, but I'll run through some of those numbers. May I ask a question?
[55:47] Speaker G (unidentified): Yeah, do you know that affected Doyle Field at all? No? Okay, no, it didn't. It's still that separation. The only thing that I didn't see on it was where they would move the gate currently. Like, I think they would have just moved it up to off the edge of the building, just have it start like it's, it was back enough. Okay, so you know where all the parking spots are? It was like it didn't even go to the fence, it came in front of it. Okay, so there's
[56:15] Speaker H (unidentified): design somewhere in your office then the area where the current pool is would be
[56:21] Speaker G (unidentified): more parking right that was basically the plan it was just gonna move and shift up because the size of the facility at one point there was talk and I don't remember where this came from, that they were taking it off the back at the point where there's no field, like, off to the side in the back. But that was, like, the second rendition of what they thought. So I just, when I started looking into it a few years ago, I just went to everybody that I knew that was involved with it and started asking questions to what actually happened. And Mike was kind enough to give me a lot of information about how it proceeded through all of that.
[57:01] Speaker I (unidentified): So yeah, we did try to dive into it when we first got in because there were pool problems when we
[57:09] Speaker H (unidentified): first came in. Yeah, in 2018, 7, 19. Don't make this your home. Yeah, I know, I feel like it.
[57:18] Speaker I (unidentified): But yeah, that definitely piqued our interest to figure out what their plans were, what the route was to get there. And I think instead of just wondering and thinking about it, we should, I believe we should just look at it for real and not just wonder.
[57:36] Speaker G (unidentified): Well, the other thing is that we paid three times to have studies done that nothing was done with. So I'm under the thing is we're not paying for squat unless we're going forward with it. Like, if we're going to do it, we have to make really good financial decisions on how it goes because the one in 85 was a large amount of money for that time period to just do the study and the design. So, and, you know, so I'd really like to look at the big picture and as a council make a decision if we're, which way, I mean, not today, or today, whatever we do, of how we want to take this. Do we want to like go forward? What is the look? Do we want to look at indoor? Do we want to look at both? And like, but I just don't feel we should commission anything until we have an absolute of where we're, which way we're going, because
[58:32] Speaker E (unidentified): It will be very expensive. I think it would be hard to make a decision though without knowing what it's going to cost. I mean, I well, yeah, it but it's a
[58:41] Speaker G (unidentified): a question of which way, like, does everybody feel more strongly to see about an indoor? Because we know the indoor is going to be more, yes, maybe 11, 12 or upwards, probably at 11, 12 for an indoor, and then you're talking eight to two to eight for an outdoor. You know, are we willing to do that? Because if you're spending two to three million dollars in and you have eight weeks
[59:14] Eric Glidden: that's a lot of money for eight weeks a year. Yeah, so I think I think so that we're like near the end. I think there's there's a good solution. I think that we have that will kind of give us some time to consider what do we want to do as a city so that we do it well, we do it right, so that we, I do want to touch on that, and I think we have a good kind of plan in place on how that can happen to kind of give us to buy us some time while still giving the community a water feature in the short term so this is just a recirculating system, same idea, it's just a bit more high-scale, 1.2 million. Anything in particular that you wanted to say about this one winning? No, it's just larger.
[59:58] Whitney Dorsett: Again, starting from scratch, just a lot more green space, and they actually with this particular one made the outdoor feature, so that's something to keep in mind. So this one is a pass-through, and so that means this is portable water that comes from our city supply that gets used once. So in some of these splash pads you can create a hit button where you press that button and the water comes out, you use it, comes down to the drain system, then it goes into the sewer. And that's what the pass-through system is.
[1:00:34] Eric Glidden: What I like about this one, and this is kind of more like the foam type of floor too, correct? Which I think...
[1:00:39] Whitney Dorsett: Yes. And you can pick that and design that in any type of feature that you want. It's basically what are you doing under the structure that's going to probably really
[1:00:49] Speaker I (unidentified): cost that much. So this is safe for that flooring that you're talking about? Yeah, absolutely.
[1:00:53] Eric Glidden: It's more soft. So if you have a kid who's running, they fall, if they obviously if you have cement they're going to skin their knees, it's going to cause
[1:01:00] Mayor Morin: Injuries, this prevents that, which I like a lot. So, and do we know with a volume, you know, I mean, I think we just discovered that, like for instance, Washville actually uses less water washing all of those cars than some of our businesses that we have in Brewer. Do we know about how much water we would use if this was the kind of system we invested in? I don't.
[1:01:26] Whitney Dorsett: And also it depends upon how big it is and how many features that you pick, because you could have again a thousand square foot space and have 12 features, and that's a lot more water. And also depends upon how many times it's hit. I'm just going to say attendance is a
[1:01:41] Speaker F (unidentified): big one on that one, the whole summer camp coming out at the same time. Yeah, a lot more than a Saturday evening.
[1:01:47] Eric Glidden: And is there any benefit to like this kind of splash through system as opposed to the recirculating? It seems to me that the recirculating system would be. Yes, it might be a little bit more expensive up front, but it seems to me that you'd realize a lot more cost savings if you were to do sort of the more... I would think so. That would now. Don't get me wrong, I recommend it. I'm just thinking out loud.
[1:02:06] Speaker E (unidentified): I think it's irresponsible to not have something that's recirculating with the cost of water.
[1:02:12] Whitney Dorsett: So what I have here is our pros and cons. So the pass-through system, which is also the flow-through single-pass system, pros would be low initial cost for equipment, simple to operate, and minimal maintenance. Because, again, you're not having to deal with the chemicals. The cons would be the long-term use of water. That's the big one. And that's what you're looking at.
[1:02:43] Eric Glidden: So I'm just going to kind of, any questions, first of all, on any of those slides? I mean, again, it's just to kind of give you a sampling of what could be, not necessarily a recommendation. Any questions on any of those designs or systems? What I want to do for this next few slides, and I'm going to go through these very quickly because I know what I'm going to do to kind of give you them to give you some context with the 2009 study. I'm going to send this to you so you have time to kind of pour through it, look through it, and again it's out of date, so anything that's in there is not going to necessarily be relevant to today. Some of the stuff still is. So I'm just going to kind of go. Through these somewhat quickly just to kind of give you an idea of what the pool study covered and also to talk about some of the costs comparisons from 2009 to today. So the 2009 study, what they did is they commissioned a company BH&A to assess the aging outdoor complex and test tube replacement paths at the auditorium site. And so what they did is they looked at both an indoor pool, they also looked at an outdoor pool. So if you look at that graph to the right, obviously an indoor pool at that time in 2009 was going to be roughly six million dollars. An outdoor pool with four lanes was going to be 1.63 million, and just for a smaller pool that didn't necessarily have the lanes you're looking at, you were looking at about 1.5 million dollars. All right, and so that pool there was, I believe it was to allow for the same capacity of swimmers as we currently have, which is 250, no more than 250 at a time. So this, the study essentially did a comparison of the two and essentially looked at what it would take to do a full replacement to allow the same number of bathers. Again, I'm going to send this to you so you kind of have an idea of what the study covered. But the outdoor pool at the existing site, there's a couple of graphs, and I just kind of pulled those out so you could see what those were. But you can kind of see how they're designed. You can see on that right-hand graphic there the Brewer Auditorium, and it looks like they kind of looked at a, you know, they have the playground, but also maybe a smaller kind of pool structure there. And at that time, it was going to be about $1.5 million for that smaller, I think it looks like three lanes with a more shallow end for kids to play and so on and so forth. An indoor pool addition beside the Brewer Auditorium, this is what they came up with for design at that time. So you can kind of see how they, how they laid it out a little bit different than some of the concepts that we've been talking here about this morning, this afternoon rather. But at that time the cost was right around six million dollars for an indoor pool complex. So what I did is I took what was in the report and kind of did a side-by-side comparison of just using the Turner Building Code, which is like a nationally recognized index for kind of comparing costs in comparison to an earlier date. And so plugging all those numbers in, an indoor pool at that time in 2009 was 6 million, as I mentioned before. For today, the Turner Building Cost Index would put that at a little over $11 million for an indoor pool. For that same, and that's just talking about that design, okay, mind you. It could be cheap. It could be less expensive if we did something smaller, but $11 million. For an outdoor pool, for what they proposed, you're looking at about $3 million overall. And for a much smaller profile, not much cheaper, but about $2.8 million for a smaller pool. With approximately three lanes in a more shallow area for kids. What was the
[1:07:14] Speaker E (unidentified): design on the indoor one? How big was that one? Let's
[1:07:21] Eric Glidden: see, 2100 square foot, cool, zero depth entry. So it looks like they did have some spray features on it in an indoor slide as well. So 2100 square feet. And what's the one we have now? I don't, wouldn't you, do you know what the measurements are like, just the overall surface area of the pool? No, I honestly don't know. I can find that out easy enough though. Thank you. That's almost more
[1:07:51] Speaker H (unidentified): of a competition for like, that's where you run meats. Yeah, exactly. That's good too.
[1:07:59] Speaker E (unidentified): That would be great, so
[1:08:08] Eric Glidden: again, you'll, you'll have all of this, but what I wanted to do is kind of give you a concept, so kind of what we're thinking, you know. Right now you've seen the condition of the pool, you've kind of given, you have a glimpse of the inside of the inner workings of it, some of the external issues just with cracking and the condition of the paving, the valve issues, so on. I mean, you've seen all of it. So from my perspective, I personally, in good conscience, cannot say yes, we should try to open up the pool next year. We could pave it, but then I think we still have all those other fixes that need to be made in terms of the electrical box, the chemicals, how those are fed. There are just so many issues right now with this pool that I don't feel that in good conscience I can say yes, we should open it. Oh, and we should also spend a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in paper. I'm in, just don't know
[1:09:15] Mayor Morin: where the other counselors are feeling, but like, it's deplorable. Yeah, we shouldn't even, it's ridiculous that our staff has even been required to work in such an environment. Like, it needs to be remedied. I like the idea of putting in a splash pad, but I also don't like the idea that we have 200 kids that we teach.
[1:09:35] Eric Glidden: teach important things. So my initial thought is that if we were to move forward in the spring, we can, we can respond to what the public has asked for many years, and we can install a splash pad. You can see this is just a rough sketch that I had engineer Jeremy Karen's put together showing a 50 by 100 foot splash pad. What we would also incorporate into here, because as you can see right now, and as I'm sure you're well aware, the where that entry is on the far side of where the parking lot is, so folks are parking it at Parks and Rec, and then they're walking along the grass to get into the pool. What this would do is it would create a 20 space parking lot that would allow folks to drive right to this, to a splash pad, which could also be used for a future pool. So if we were to put in a some sort of water feature for the next year to buy us some time to kind of plan for what do we want to do with the pool, i feel that we could, we could do that in the immediate future. We could put a splash pad in. i think if we were to bid it out this winter, we probably could have something in place by the spring. That buys us a year, we close the year the pool for a year, and then we can assess, okay, what do we want to do for a pool? Do we want to do an outdoor pool? Do we want to do an indoor pool? What is it that we want to do? And that gives us time to really think it through thoroughly and to critically assess what do we want to do as the city. That's just my initial, that's my initial thought going into this is that I can't, I don't think that we have enough time right now to replace the pool next spring. I just don't think it's possible. What this would do is it would buy some time while still giving the community what they want in the form of a splash pad, gives us a year to kind of plan for what we really want to
[1:11:44] Speaker G (unidentified): do. well I added up as you guys were talking the amounts, the opening, all of the stuff, doubling the paint, whatever it would be, and i come up with 246 000 to open the pool next year. And that was all of that, 's the 120, that's the, like we're not talking, and i added in the head wall, like i put that in purposely, which is probably going to be very close to what the paving is. So you're talking like 146, 246, 250 000 to open the pool for eight weeks next year. paving has to be done now, and I have a problem with that if like that spending that amount of money for it. so I agree with you, and that's why I had to add that in my head to how much, and it's not just the money, it's the facility itself
[1:12:39] Mayor Morin: And this is reeks of the Penobscot County Jail. I mean, you know, we just continue to put money in, you know, putting good money after bad. It does not make sense. And given how deplorable the conditions are, I am not in favor of doing any remediation to the pool as it stands. And I feel like the presentation that you ladies have put together is because you feel strongly that it is not a good safe working environment. You pointed several things out from that and am I correct and yes so I personally to Not to say to speed this along long but not to belabor the point of is anybody in favor of doing repairs to open the pool so that we can talk about that
[1:13:32] Eric Glidden: Okay I think what this could do what this solution like I said it could buy us some time but again it still gives the public something to use in the short term and then we can assess and then this still allows plenty of possibility to put in a variety of you could do different sizes different size I mean you could you could you could cut it in half you could you can make it a little bit larger if you wanted to but at least there's options there that are still on that on that property while Still having a water feature there to use in the short term I just really
[1:14:11] Speaker E (unidentified): Hesitate spending the money on a splash pad. I mean to me that's kind of more of a luxury. I would rather save our money get our pool done and any money that would go into that splash pad would be put into the pool so we're not scrimping or cutting back on what the what we're going to be putting into the pool and then once that's done if we have the money I would rather do a splash pad possibly at that point but I just think financially it would be better to put our money into the pool that we're Going to move forward with so that we can if we want to try to go with an indoor one or we want to try to go with one that's better it's a little easier to justify the taxpayers spending that money and not already have had spent you know half a million or a million or million a half or whatever on a splash pad. I just think we would be more responsible to put the money in my
[1:15:06] Speaker I (unidentified): Opinion into the pool. I agree with your sentiments with but am I mistaken that there might be possibly a grant I mean there are there are funding opportunities
[1:15:20] Eric Glidden: I mean that obviously there's no guarantee that we would secure those grants but there are funding opportunities for grants specifically from some of these companies so it's a possibility but I also I'm curious if we
[1:15:34] Mayor Morin: did wait and we didn't put in a splash pad that seems like that would be very significant to the youth that participate in camp at the rec every summer
[1:15:59] Speaker E (unidentified): I don't know you're not going to be swimming in it I don't know you could do old school and put sprinklers out. I don't know.
[1:16:06] Speaker F (unidentified): That's what we did this past summer once the pool went down and the kids progressively got border and border and border. I think
[1:16:13] Speaker E (unidentified): the reality is even with a splash pad, they're going to get border and border and border because there's really very limited things you can even do with a splash pad. I think the novelty wears off, which is why I think as a taxpayer, I would rather put that money into a pool and do the best pool that we possibly can do because that's where we're we're gonna get the most advantage out of it I think I think the big thing is
[1:16:39] Speaker G (unidentified): the amount of people that want to splash oh that's what I was just gonna say is I have the same was it's overwhelming the amount of people that want to splash that I am it's the number one request it has been the number one request since day one like my kids are all grown and gone but you know these people that have smaller children want a splash pad the kids want a splash pad so like if we're looking at this if we can do it at a fiscally good level try to find some grants to cover a portion of it that will give them something to do if we're putting a foot you know if we're putting a pool back in there you make this a complex it's just not a pool so it makes it a destination so
[1:17:29] Speaker I (unidentified): i think the splash pad also is not just for kids in the program it's right it's for the entire community so yeah
[1:17:36] Speaker G (unidentified): no these are kids that are not in the program right it bikes up to the pool or
[1:17:41] Whitney Dorsett: yeah to a feature especially when it's hot i mean we had a really hot beginning of our summer and everyone was trying to cool off
[1:17:47] Speaker I (unidentified): How did you get through to go to the pool to keep those kids occupied?
[1:17:51] Speaker F (unidentified): So what we had done, so I was the after-school coordinator before this, so I ran the summer camp before I got my promotion to assistant director. So what we decided to do was we went to Walmart, and we bought every single slip and slide that we possibly could. I've seen them out there. Yes. We also were lucky enough to be Home Depot donated big rolls of plastic as well that we rolled down the hill. It's an awesome idea, but it's there's, I'm sorry, that they can only keep their kids' attentions for maybe five to ten minutes at a time. So if we did do something like a splash pad, we could just give them another option. They can go slip and slide on Doyle and, or we can split them up and they can do 30 minutes at the splash pad, 30 minutes on the slip and slide. But it's just hard, you know. You can only throw so many water balloons before they get bored.
[1:18:46] Mayor Morin: I would be interested. For me, this is just me, I don't necessarily like the one that didn't have the recycling water just because I don't feel like that is responsible, you know, environmentally. But I also, you know, there's a big price difference. And so, you know, I would be interested in knowing more about what options could be like, you know, gold, platinum, silver type options for us to look at.
[1:19:24] Eric Glidden: You're talking about a splash pad. Splash pad.
[1:19:26] Speaker I (unidentified): And understanding the water usage amount as well, even with the pass-through system versus the…
[1:19:32] Mayor Morin: Yeah, I think that's just being good stewards. But I also just want to say that I also love the idea of, you know, I think indoor would be amazing, but I also think it's just much bigger than what our community can support. That's just my two cents. I could be wrong. But I really do like the idea if we have, if we do, if we do ultimately end up doing a new pool, which I would love because of, you know, not only, you know, the community visits but the number of teaching, you know, that happens and it's a very important skill. Also I just think it should be heated because I think we'll be able to get so much more use out of it. And I think that if we can even have hours where, you know, and I don't know what the requirements for lifeguards, if adults are using it. I'm sure there are requirements, just probably not the same.
[1:20:25] Whitney Dorsett: You mean as an adult user and a kid user? So, right.
[1:20:29] Mayor Morin: So if the design was, you know, we have a heated pool and during these months this is open to, you know, adult swim, those who are interested in doing laps.
[1:20:39] Whitney Dorsett: And that's just an operation planning. Yeah. For programming. We can do that as a parks and rec.
[1:20:44] Mayor Morin: And it could be, because in my mind I'm just thinking dollars and cents, how many staff do you need to have there? Do you have to have five staff there when you have adults lap swimming?
[1:20:56] Speaker F (unidentified): It depends on how big the facility is. So the way that lifeguards work is they are separated into zones. Because of the size of our pool, that's why we need to have four watching the pool at all times. Because there's only so much that you can scan your eyes across at a certain given time. So if it was a smaller pool we could possibly get by with two or three but again it all depends on what size it is and also the depth as well and just my
[1:21:25] Speaker G (unidentified): understanding correct me if I'm wrong lifeguards are generally high school and college students yes so you don't get them except on weekends until school is out and they are done in August basically so we don't want to work weekend and right so if even if it's heated good like the ability to have even if you offer training to train them you a lot of times you won't get them the why couldn't get no lifeguards even offering free training to get your life guard certificate so that's something to keep in consideration like we can offer it at the high school like we'll send you to get free lifeguard training you can work for us this summer they still won't do it until they're up you know in June so and you know so I think that's something else like so that doesn't work well we can leave it all we want but I don't think like that is the
[1:22:15] Whitney Dorsett: question of being the higher I think it's also tapping into just not the local community I mean I get it come from a place where there's a ton of people yeah it's reaching out to the colleges yeah reaching out to the colleges there's swim teams that are surrounding us and these people are collegiate swimmers yeah and they stay giving them a part-time job where they're in the pool and they get to work out and do laps and their breaks stuff like that might be appealing yeah the other piece too is with an indoor pool which I wanted to share is that with an indoor pool comes multiple full-time staff members and that's something you all need to keep yeah the thing is I
[1:22:51] Mayor Morin: don't I mean you know I think Miss Kathleen kick giggled when it was forty five hundred dollars was you know the revenue I don't I don't think that you know, this isn't, this isn't a, there's nothing about this that is a design to be a revenue maker. But I think as we decide what we're going to do, we need to just keep that in mind. So it's like, is our pool, can we have a smaller pool but still, you know, be what we need it to be? What, you know, what does that look like?
[1:23:24] Speaker G (unidentified): Match the 250 people that can use it a day. You know what I mean? Do we need the 250 people? Because sometimes, yeah, that pool is absolutely packed. It is. Sometimes it's not. So and when it's
[1:23:35] Whitney Dorsett: when it's packed, truly the summer camps are there, okay, because it's in that open, that open swim window, so you have all those summer camp kids. I think the other thing to keep in mind is that your potentially your indoor pool isn't going to be much bigger than what we currently have.
[1:23:50] Speaker E (unidentified): We haven't promoted it a whole lot either, forever, because it's never been in great shape, so it's. It's pretty much been promoted just to our camps and a few kids that live around there, which is unfortunate because I think there's a lot more Brewer kids that would have loved to have taken advantage of it. But I personally feel like if we're even thinking of doing a splash pad, I would like to see that go out to the voters, because to me that's a big investment, and I 100% think a pool is so much better. That would take years to even be able to type out a ballot. I think it's just that it's a big investment, and I, again, would personally like to, a pool is where we're going to get the most advantage, not a splash pad. And to me, again, I think a splash pad is more of a luxury than.
[1:24:36] Mayor Morin: I am not in favor of, I'm personally not in favor of putting that kind of a dollar amount out to voters, because, I mean, worst kind of case scenario for that large one was, what was that, 1.2, 1.
[1:24:47] Whitney Dorsett: Yeah, the biggest ones, $4,000, $4,500.
[1:24:51] Mayor Morin: Yeah. So, I mean, I feel like I can respect what you're saying, but I think that to, you know, to put, there's so much cost required in order to do that. I think if Karen were sitting here in the room, she would probably potentially shut that down and be like, there's all of these other costs that are associated with it, and the return on investment might not make sense. I could see absolutely getting to a place in space where we may go to bond if we were going to do an indoor pool or something along the lines of that to make sure. But honestly, we have bigger fish to fry in our community with what's happening with the Penobscot County Jail. And, you know, our money, our money, our tax dollars are only going to get higher and higher until we can, you know, remedy that issue. So I do think we need to be conscientious and budget minded in whatever it is that we do, because, you know, the jail, even if everything works the way it's supposed to be, our tax bill is going to continue to go like this until it can level off a little bit. So, you know, I think it's very important to your point, Danny, is to make sure that we're very conscientious about any sort of increases that we're doing. One thing to
[1:26:06] Whitney Dorsett: keep in mind with the splash pad, but also the pool, is that it's customizable. So if you have a budget that you need to stick with, different features, different sizes, how you want the surface to be, what kind of system that you want, there's three different systems you can build that into that, and that just by saying the splash pad is a quicker turnaround to build as well than the pool, but the pool can also be customized to do exactly what we want for the budget that we could put in. I mean, obviously there's a little room and things are going to happen, but a splash pad is much quicker turnaround for the
[1:26:42] Speaker G (unidentified): customized. Well, the question also is, do you start off with a smaller system that you put the availability and to make it a larger splash pad? So you start off with like four features, which is really less expensive, but build it so it has the ability to add on several more features if you want to. Like that would be the ultimate, where we pay the least amount to get it started and then add something in later on just to get, like, what if something happens and we cannot get this pool to play for the next couple of years? And, you know, recession, whatever else happens, you know, that's the number one ask of every single, like every person when the pool closed, put in a splash pad. You know, so how do we listen to people, do it responsibly, do we do it with a
[1:27:32] Whitney Dorsett: smaller start, you know, so it's what you shared, yes, you can do that, you can build it, because again you do get a little more expensive with different features, you may get, I mean, you can make a feature that looks like a clubhouse and you have a big bucket of dropping water, or you could do something that is, you know, a six foot flower that they press it and it drops water, but you can build those things and they can be like customized and screwed in and replaced, so it is another thing to down the line if the splash pad gets stale and it's, you know, seven, eight years down or ten years down, you can
[1:28:05] Speaker E (unidentified): Buy new features to play. You did hit on a good point though, Michelle, speaking of recession and stuff, and again I am just so afraid that the money that we put into this will deter or prolong the ability of for us to put in a pool, and that scares me a lot more because I think a pool is far more advantageous to our youth than a splash pad, but there's grant money, there's
[1:28:27] Speaker G (unidentified): great money out there, so if we could get grant money for it, which really doesn't exist for pools at this point, there was, there was, matter of fact, the DOT had money a few years ago that was available to replace that pool.
[1:28:44] Mayor Morin: I mean, I also think that there's opportunities to maybe have, you know, donors in our community consider, you know, making donations. Can we use any TIF dollars at all for anything along the lines of this?
[1:29:03] Eric Glidden: I would say potentially. I mean, there has to be some sort of, you have to tie it to a public benefit in some way, and I certainly think that you could tie it. I think you could, I have to look through the rules, I don't want to say I don't
[1:29:13] Mayor Morin: want to say for sure that you can. I mean, I think we're just kind of in the, like, you know, in the figuring it out stage, and I would love to say that we could. I am with you, Danny, like I think the old, now I will tell you that I get questions all the time about splash pad, like you do, and like Whitney, like you've said, lot a lot, so I think that if we can do that reasonably price, but I do think a pool is a huge priority, and you know, I just suggested heated just because I think could we get more use out of it, could more people in the community use it then what do if it was heated, and there's, you know, solar options, all kinds of different things that are now available, so I mean, I think that this presentation has, I think this presentation has been good, I think for the general, we are on board with doing the renovations to the pool as it stands. I don't think any of the counselors are in favor of that. I think that we're kind of at a little bit of an impasse, like, you know, I think council Halloran and I are both thinking a pool is a super priority and I get what she's saying, but I also feel like we've had so much feedback from people who want to have a splash pad, you know. If we could even just do something small, because I also get like all of the kids that go to program, like they're making memories, right? Well, like that's part of being in this community. Like we want to be a part of like making memories for our community, which to me was driving to the pool on my bike, my ten speed. Have you reached out to any towns
[1:30:53] Speaker E (unidentified): like Old Town and others that have splash pads, if they're still utilizing them?
[1:30:58] Whitney Dorsett: Bangor's is packed and that's the first place I got here with my kids is everyone's like go to the splash pad before and that's why people as soon as they figure out who I was they're like why don't we have a splash pad?
[1:31:09] Eric Glidden: Well the great thing is too you know I didn't really mention it but obviously you have the playground right there too so it's right that really is kind of the perfect place for a splash pad you have kids who are already there who are already using the playground and then who could use the splash pad as well at
[1:31:24] Speaker I (unidentified): the same time so no pool is definitely a priority I would love to see funding for splash pad that's not really gonna be putting the burden on the citizens
[1:31:39] Speaker E (unidentified): but yeah definitely the pool is I'm just afraid it will take away from yeah how soon and what we can build for a pool I'm not personally willing to do that
[1:31:49] Speaker G (unidentified): Like for two years. I mean, it could be up to two years, at least two years before we had a pool. So we leave nothing at all for kids to do except a playground.
[1:31:59] Speaker E (unidentified): Kids survived before without splashbacks.
[1:32:02] Speaker G (unidentified): Right, but it's hard to get to Bangor. Do you know what I mean? A lot of these kids can't go somewhere else. So, you know.
[1:32:09] Mayor Morin: Just to share with you all, I just quickly just jumped online and looked. So the $25,000, the Kings, Tabitha and Stephen King donated $25,000 to the Friends of the Dakin Pool campaign. There's Harold Alfone Foundation grants that this would be eligible for. And then there's also one, although we missed the deadline for this year, but there is a meaningful grant opportunity for up to a million dollars for the main land and water conservation fund so but we've already missed the missed the deadline for that but like there's yearly ones so that'll come up again next year yeah so there's tons of opportunities for us to you know and i think it's just time that we take this super serious about
[1:33:00] Speaker G (unidentified): What we're gonna do and there's still some federal ones that aren't main base that you can tap into that somehow someway I'm with the NLC grant group and they keep inviting me back for more and more learning which is awesome because I don't know why they let me in for free but they do so but they have some things that I might be able to use the NLC or get you in a spot that you can use some of the stuff that they're giving to me that have this type of rec type things and they have a focus on Grants at some points for these things so what I've come to find here was that
[1:33:43] Whitney Dorsett: A lot of these flashback companies that I was talking with that create these packets but they also have incentives they're going with them and getting like two free features or something
[1:33:52] Mayor Morin: Something like that so and you know we're five it's five o'clock right now so I just I want to say like I am I think the pool is absolute tremendous priority and we need to figure out whatever grants we can apply for and look at that because that's important I personally am also in favor of us looking at some sort of a reasonable splash pad as a band-aid on the in-between but also being mindful that I want to make sure that we can like council Halloran said spend that money on the pool so to me It would be like can we you know explore what those options would be that would be somewhat reasonably priced or even the example of what Michelle said maybe it gets built larger but not fully functional that maybe that doesn't even make sense maybe
[1:34:43] Speaker H (unidentified): Maybe through phases or something yeah well yeah not maybe larger but less features less features
[1:34:50] Speaker G (unidentified): To begin with a couple on the end that just aren't put in it would have cost us you know you know twenty thousand dollars more to put those in leave them alone when we have money you can put
[1:34:59] Eric Glidden: The features in later so and I think too just kind of echo what Mike Martin said before he retired you know one of the things that he heard a lot from parents was well number one we want a splash pad but he also felt at the same time you know we could we could do a splash pad but also you know maybe make the pool a bit smaller he felt that the pool the size pool that we have we didn't need to duplicate that and make it the same size he really felt like we could get by with something that was a bit smaller to serve our community. So I think, you know, this is just me. I'm not trying to convince anybody here, but I think that, you know, like Mayor Morgan said, a splash pad in the interim, it's, it's being responsive to what the community wants. But maybe we don't spend as much on the pool. We make it a bit, maybe a bit smaller, and then that kind of buys us some time to do that. We're already
[1:35:50] Speaker G (unidentified): coming back. Well, all of them have that shallow end for small children, which this doesn't have. It has all of them shown has a separate bump out for smaller children, which if you're making the pool smaller but you're adding this separate for toddlers and the rest of it, like that is meeting a much better need than what we've ever done. So I mean, it's not really making the pool itself might be smaller, but they have the bump up for the children, maybe elderly, maybe somebody that doesn't want to get fully in the pool, or I think that's kind of the answer to it is that it's giving it a separate, you know, spot. But do you need
[1:36:30] Speaker E (unidentified): And we'll get a square footage of the pool we currently have.
[1:36:33] Speaker G (unidentified): So I like that side of it.
[1:36:35] Speaker E (unidentified): I'm not a fan of going smaller.
[1:36:39] Mayor Morin: So is everybody okay with us still exploring what this looks like with maybe a smaller splash pad as a Band-Aid, but also with a total eye on getting on the pool replacement ASAP?
[1:36:54] Speaker G (unidentified): I have no problem exploring it. Same here.
[1:36:57] Speaker E (unidentified): I don't mind looking at it, but I personally still don't want to spend any taxpayer money on it. If you can get grant money for it, that doesn't cost us anything, but I'm open to looking at anything.
[1:37:08] Speaker G (unidentified): I'd rather have all the answers to what we're looking at, to, like, you know, can you bid this? Can you tell us what this bid would be? You know, can we do put it in but have these two features, you know, these four features left out, We'll you know put them in maybe two three years down the line when we're able to expand again. I see no problem with it
[1:37:33] Speaker I (unidentified): No, I'd like to know what our options are for sure
[1:37:37] Mayor Morin: Does anybody have anything else to add before we move along on the agenda options are good
[1:37:41] Speaker E (unidentified): All right, I would like to thank you ladies. Yes. Thank you. Thank you very well put together guys
[1:37:49] Speaker G (unidentified): I appreciated Eric and
[1:37:51] Speaker H (unidentified): Whitney and Grace. You did it quite vivid
[1:37:53] Speaker I (unidentified): when you were going through it. And appalling.
[1:37:57] Mayor Morin: And on behalf of the city, I would like to apologize. But I also should say, and I want to make sure that I say this, that I know that the previous administration, as it was mentioned, is I think that they were trying to make it stay together with bubble gum and stick and duct tape and yeah you know so I totally respect that I'm not sure if duct tape was in
[1:38:24] Speaker E (unidentified): the budget at some point so I personally feel like they really put their heart and soul to their job 100 totally but the kids first and not sure they got enough credit for everything they had to go through outstanding okay
[1:38:40] Mayor Morin: so moving on to public comment is there any counselors that have any comments public comment so we will now hear from comments from the public but please be advised that no action will be taken at tonight's meeting or any public comments or public comments will be referred to city staff to respond to when appropriate if you wish to share comment or concern please step up to the microphone and state your name and your address okay seeing no movement in the audience we'll move on to the consent calendar will the clerk please read the
[1:39:17] City Clerk: consent calendar resolved be 0 3 approved use of school capital reserve funds for Brewer athletic complex ad a improvements and Center Street heating improvements order a 1 9 0 accept donation to Brewer Parks and Recreation Department from Fisher family fund in honor of Amy Sear order a 1 9 1 accept donation from Winterport boot shop to city of Brewer for young citizens public Safety Academy order a 192 approve carry forward encumbrance of appropriated but not expended fiscal year 2026 funds for approved projects order a 193 authorized purchase of replacement vehicle for Brewer Police Department thank you are
[1:40:09] Mayor Morin: there any items to be removed from the consent calendar for individual consideration okay seeing none the chair recognizes councillor Halloran will you
[1:40:18] Speaker E (unidentified): please move the consent calendar yes I move that the orders on the consent calendar have passage I second that all those in favor by unanimous the orders
Unfinished Business
[1:40:28] Mayor Morin: on the consent calendar have passage moving on so we have no monthly reports but we're moving on to nominations appointments and election two zero two six dash eight one nine four order appoint member to city a brewer cultural and arts committee the chair recognizes councillor Daniels we move the order I move that the order of passage second all those in favor by unanimous the order has passage there is no unfinished business to discuss but we do have new business will the clerk please read the consent calendar order C 0 2 5 amend
[1:41:10] City Clerk: chapter 24 of the Charter codes and ordinances of the city of Brewer and type of land use code to change a portion of professional business zoning district to general business GB zoning district at 221 Derrigo Drive tax map 7 lot 7 order C 0 2 6 authorized contract zone agreement of J cubed LLC Sarah Weatherby and city of Brewer for property located at 99 State Street in Brewer main tax map 30 lot 156 are there any items to be removed from the consent
[1:41:46] Mayor Morin: calendar for individual consideration? Okay, seeing none, the chair recognizes
[1:41:52] Speaker E (unidentified): Council Halloran. I move that the amendment on the consent calendar be certified and filed with the city clerk for posting. I second that. All in
[1:42:00] Mayor Morin: favor. By unanimous vote, the amendments are certified and will be filed with the city clerk for posting. There are no new items of leave of counsel. I'll now entertain motion to adjourn and make a motion to adjourn by the
[1:42:22] Eric Glidden: way Whitney was gracious to provide these are just from one