The City of Port Alberni’s aging pool will no longer have a high diving board, according to a report from director of community services Theresa Kingston.
“Our high diving board has been taken out of service. It’s deemed to no longer be safe and when we shut the pool down shortly for the summer we will be decommissioning that diving board,” CAO Tim Pley told council on Monday night.
According to Kingston’s report, the degradation of the rubber fulcrum assembly roller has caused the dive board to move from its proper, safe position.
“The dive board itself has been hitting and rubbing on a metal part of the fulcrum assembly which has caused damage to the dive board itself. There is a section on the board that has now been ‘scooped’ out and has fissures forming along the edge where it was making contact,” Kingston’s report reads.
Despite ongoing age-related issues at the nearly 50-year-old pool, the council has yet to take any measures to fundraise for the pool aside from a $1.5 million reserve fund created earlier this year, according to Coun. Jack McLeman.
“There’s been nothing since. There are some people thinking that they’d like to use the money from the community forests but it would take forever at $100,000 a year. We’re looking for millions here,” said McLeman following the meeting.
“The last I’ve heard is that if that pool lasts four more years we’ll be lucky and we may just have to operate without a pool for a while.”
A replacement pool has been added into the 2018 budget at a cost of $20 million. The city’s pool is the oldest unrenovated pool in B.C.
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