The Payson Town Council held a regular meeting on July 10, 2024, starting at 4:00 PM and adjourning at 4:28 PM. The meeting included a public hearing on the property tax levy, approval of the consent agenda, a proclamation for Parks and Recreation Month, and public comments focused on the proposed aquatic center. Council Member Scott Nossek was absent.
She's on Zoom. All right. There we go. Can you hear us out there? Yes. All right. Thumbs up. Like to see that. Uh call to the public. Um, Lori Thompson. Oh, sorry. Is that okay? That is absolutely possible. Um, thank you, members of the council and city staff. I just appreciate um, I want to talk just a little bit about the new pool that we're looking to build in Payson. Um, you know, we're very excited. We know that a pool is a quality of life issue in the town. Drowning is the leading cause for children under four. Um, they stand more of a chance of drowning than dying in a car accident. Ninety-one percent of children under fourteen with autism die of drowning. So that needs to be stopped. And swim lessons can stop that by eighty-eight percent. Um, I went to the meeting the other day. Um, not very many of us were there. Um, but we were, and I have to look at the four drawings that the town is uh proposing for that. And honestly, I was a little bit disappointed. Um, there's always been a feeling that there would be a partnership between the school district and the town on this pool. And um, the pool, only one of the pools could be used for competitive swim meetings. It was taught that this pool may draw people up here. Well, a pool the size of or smaller than Taylor Pool is not going to draw people from the valley up here. The only thing that really would would be an aquatic center, where this isn't not, it's a pool. And the only thing other thing would be if they had a swim meet up here. We're bringing about 20 kids from Hayson to Winslow this weekend, and they're gonna be eating up there and getting gas, and then the next week we're going to Cottonwood, which has meat scheduled all the way into October in Cottonwood. The designs on the pool. We need competitive swimming. Our seniors need aqua therapy. But in order to do aqua therapy, you need two separate pools. The first three pools would have a good cost recovery rate of thirty to forty percent if run properly. The third pool that can do swim meets, it can do more swim lessons, it can do more um water robots, and can do aqua therapy if run right would have a recovery rate of about sixty to seventy percent. And I'm a national speaker on cost recovery rate for pools. Um, we just seeing those and not seeing that the high school still won't be able to host a meet. Special Olympics won't be able to host a meet. Masters, middle school. I've got a bunch of middle school kids that want to swim this year. I've got a bunch of middle school kids that want to swim this year, and they can't host a meet in all but one of those pools. So I just ask that the town be open, transparent, and look at that. We can always build a gym. Once you build that pool, it's done. You cannot go back and rebuild the pool. You can add a gym.