Selby Strategy Could Change the Scope and Cost of a New City Swimming Pool

By Pauline Masson – 

Pacific reisdents may see a new approach to upgrading or building a new city swimming pool as City Administrator Harold Selby turns his personal strategy of networking and fact finding to the project.

Selby stepped into the new swimming pool issue two weeks ago when he mingled with municipal leaders from across the state as he and other Pacific officials attended a three-day Missouri Municipal League (MML) conference for local officials in Kansas City.

Mayor Heather Filley, and aldermen James Cleeve and Rick Presley also joined the city, county and state officials who often find themselves working together on grants, legislation and big budget projects. 

“There were several swimming pool companies at the conference because they want to be where the city leaders are – they want that business,” Selby said. “These are the people, where you put it out for bid and they tell you want it would cost to build it. And it was interesting, when I mentioned design and build, they said, ‘we could do that, but we prefer to do the bid process.”

Selby said he offered as an example, the pool in St. James that was the same age Pacific’s pool is now when they had it redone. But they used the existing pool house as part of that pool. 

“One of the pool guys said, ‘Yes, we would look at that. That could save a lot of money,’”Selby said. 

“The other thing was, I told him what our pool looked like and he showed me where they took a pool like ours and they were able to do rebuilt it and it turned out fine.”

Selby used his cell phone to take a picture of the Harvest Park pool in Wichita, Kansas, pictured above, designed by Waters Edge Aquatic Designs in Kansas City and built by Dondlinger Construction of Wichita, Kansas.

“I thought this looked a lot like our pool and like our bulding,” he said. “If you look at the picture, before and after, it’s the same pool, same building, and they added a zero entry wading pool over to side, and some green areas,”  he said. “The building is concete block, pretty indestructable.”

“I don’t think the public wants to raise taxes to do it, so we have to find a different way of financing it,” he said. “Maybe its grants. Or some other way of doing that. But the first thing we have to find out is how much are we talking about.”

“Kyle McCawley with Waters Edge Aquatic Design will come here next week and look at our building and pool. Maybe there is a way they can line that, use that same hole. There is a lot of infrastructure sitting there,” he said. “When I drove by it when it was operational a couple of months ago, it looked to me the same as it did when I left. It looked pretty nice. People were swimming.”

Selby also said claims that the pool was losing 7,000 gallons of water a day might not be as alarming as it was made out to be.

“If you want to buy 7,000 gallons of water, you can probably buy it for fifty bucks. It’s nothing to buy that much water. It’s not like water is expensive,” he said.

The mission before Pacific, he said, is to take the right amount of time and get the right information, to get real numbers.

“When I walked up to each of the pool building companies, I said to them I want a list of the pools you have built in the past two years, how much they cost, and where you built them, which municipalities,” he said. “I’ll call the municipalities, or email them, and I’ll ask how did you finance that, how did you pay for it?”

“There may be grants available for city swimming pools,” he said. “But we need to look at every type of funding to avoid putting the burden of paying for the full cost of a new pool on the citizens.”

Selby has spent much of the last 25 years searching out grants for public works and business development projects and writing grant applications seeking funds. He has been successful in getting numerous grants for both Pacific and St. James.

There is still another funding mechanism that hasn’t been explored. Selby spoke to the Administrative Committee, Sept.25 about the possibility of a use tax on Internet sales.

Many cities have passed a use tax on Internet sales to protect hometown businesses. Cities can set up the use tax and designate where they want the funds to go.

“In St James part of the funds went to to police and part to animal control,” he said.  “An estimate of how much the tax would bring in the first year was $35,000. It brought in $135,000. Pacific is twice the size of St. James and has younger citizens that use Amazon, Wayfair and Internet purchasing. MML can give idea how much a Use tax would generate.”

The citizens also might find an Internet use tax easier to handle than a property tax. It would have to be put before citizens for a vote. There is time to get a Use Tax on theApril 2023 ballot.

Selby also said it not his style to hire a bunch of engineers or project managers to tell the city what to build or how to manage capital improvement projects.

“We need to do this ourselves, using our experienced staff, the Public Works, Parks Department, the Park Board and with input from citiziens,” he said.

He is also reluctant to place a time frame on a new pool.

“I don’t know how long this pool can last, but we need to maintain it and use it until we have the right plan for a new pool,” he said.