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Eventful first five days for city pool
With lifeguard and weather issues, the Greencastle Aquatic Center has only been open for about five days after launching the summer season on June 1.
But oh, what an eventful five days it has been.
“It’s been fairly busy,” Park Assistant Director Chrysta Snellenberger told the Park Board Wednesday night, adding, “it’s been good ...” as her voice seemed to trail off.
But before she could define “good,” she dropped the other shoe. “We’ve had three fights, a wallet stolen and a break-in.”
That’s not even mentioning the theft of the concession stand’s Amazon order that was delivered to the park house at the Bloomington Street entrance on Sunday, only to have porch pirates make off with $200 in candy and food.
While park officials first believed the break-in was just after-hours shenanigans with chairs thrown into the deep end of the pool and other nefarious tomfoolery, when Snellenberger went to activate the green water slide Wednesday afternoon, she found out differently.
The power box to the slide had been damaged. Whether it was damaged by those nocturnal pool guests or due to an electrical storm power surge remains to be seen.
“The power box that runs the slide was either damaged or burned itself up,” Snellenberger told the board. “We have no way of knowing whether it was them (the intruders) or not.”
On Thursday, Snellenberger said she sent photos of the damage to pool experts at Spear Corp., noting that it looked like it was damaged between the controller and the power box itself.
Hopefully, it could still be under warranty and/or covered by insurance, Park Board members noted.
Regardless, the incident could be the impetus for looking again at security cameras for the pool and park, where the summer kicked off earlier with vandals destroying the fixtures in one of the restrooms.
“Is there a plan for cameras?” board member Pete Meyer asked.
“It’s been talked about it,” Mayor Bill Dory, who was in the audience, responded.
“We’ve been receiving assistance from the Police Department,” the mayor added.
While all that was going on, concession manager Joanna Muncie, a Park Board member as well, was having her own problems. Stocking the concession stand with top-selling items has become difficult. Pretzels with cheese sauce were the big seller last year and already so popular this season that the concession stand has sold out of them.
“You can’t find pretzels anywhere,” she lamented.
Muncie managed to pick up 160 pretzels at Sam’s Club and those were gone in a day. She found another box of 30 at Kroger and those all sold out Saturday afternoon.
Even tortilla chips were scarce, she said, explaining that she pounced on a sale at Kroger and bought 30 bags last week.
In other pool-related issues, Snellenberger explained the necessity of the new pool schedule, which finds the aquatic center closed on Mondays and Tuesdays in order to give lifeguards days off.
The pool is employing 18 guards this summer with eight required on duty at any one time.
“It isn’t an option we wanted to choose,” Snellenberger said of the reduced schedule. “It’s out of necessity. It’s for the safety of our guards that we’re giving them the two days off.”