Pool petition makes a splash

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At the Board of Trustees meeting on July 14, resident Mary Beth Kearns presented a petition to have a public pool built in the village.

Rockville Centre, Kearns argued, is one of the only villages in the area that doesn’t have a swimming facility of some kind, either a pool or a beach. Malverne, she said, is the only other village in the Town of Hempstead that doesn’t have a pool (some villages have their own pools and others have town or county facilities).

“For decades, the village has debated whether or not to have a pool,” Kearns said.

This isn’t the first time the idea of building a pool in Rockville Centre has been raised. But it has been shot down in the past. But with more and more neighboring communities building and improving swimming facilities, Kearns feels that now is the time for Rockville Centre to also build a pool.

A pool would give the Recreation Center and the Senior Center more opportunities to host programs, Kearns argued, as well as giving village residents a place to swim on hot summer days. Kearns was not sure where a pool could go, but suggested somewhere on the grounds of the Recreation Center.

“There are so many things you can do when you have a community pool,” Kearns said, listing off things like swimming lessons for youngsters, lifeguarding jobs for teenagers and exercise classes for the elderly. “If you don’t have the pool, you can’t do any of those things.”

Kearns’s petition had 322 signatures when she presented it to the Village Board and more than two dozen comments. Board members asked her about details about the proposal, such as how much a pool could cost and where it could be located. Kearns didn’t have exact answers, but suggested that the pool could be built somewhere on the Recreation Center property. Trustee Michael Sepe responded by saying that residents would be angry if the village displaced a soccer field to make room for a pool.

But Mayor Francis X. Murray seemed enthusiastic, saying that he loved pools.

“I appreciate hearing from our residents regarding the different ways we can improve our village,” Murray later told the Herald. “The idea of the village having its own pool is worthy of consideration. We will look into the costs associated with the installation, operation and maintenance of a village pool and also research what location would be most desirable. We must then weigh it against other priorities and its impact on our property taxes and any other activities which it may effect.”