City Council Approves $2Mil For High School Pool Repairs

The days of 4 a.m. practices for the Medford High School swim team may soon be over.

The city council approved requests from Mayor Michael McGlynn in total of $2.4 million to reconstruct the high school indoor pool, which has been closed since 2008. The request received no opposition, with all councilors voting in support of it, except for Fred Dello Russo, who was absent from the meeting.

For Mary Judge, head coach of the girls swim team, the battle to re-open the pool began July 13, 2008, when it closed due to corrosion.

"We have haunted the mayor ever since," Judge said Tuesday. "He likes us. I'm glad he does."

The funding was approved in two votes, one for a $1.9 million bond and another to use over $400,000 in insurance settlement money to fund the reconstruction.

Over the long-term, the pool should be able to sustain itself financially, and possibly generate revenue for the city, budget director Stephanie Burke told the council before the vote. An indoor pool Revere brings in about $75,000 in annual revenue for the city and, while specific data wasn't available, an indoor pool operated by Somerville is also self-sufficient, Burke said.

City Councilor Paul Camuso said repairing the pool was "long over-due," and councilor Michael Marks said it will be useful to the swim team, the community and potentially curriculum at the high school.

"I think this is well worth the bond itself," Marks said.

While she voted in support of the bond, councilor Breanna Lungo-Koehn said she was concerned with the number of capital improvements the city is coming forward with this year and the impact they could have on its finances.

"We were giving out pinkslips in June and now we’re bonding a great amount of money," she said.

For the swim team, potential repairs of the pool will mean they can practice after school, instead of the early hours before school, the only time available to them to use the indoor pool at Tufts University, Judge said. The pool can also be used for training excercises for the police and fire departments she said.

It remains to be seen whether the pool would be opened up for rental, or if residents of nearby communities would be able to get passes to use it, Superintendent Roy Belson said. School administrators, the school committee and the mayor will have to weigh in on that, he said.

"That’s a decision everyone has to make," Belson said.