City pool usage remains high

Pool attendance tops 10,500 for summer 2022

A change in city pool hours appears to have been well received.

The city of Medford revised the pool hours this year to eliminate having the pool closed for an hour during the afternoon and moved adult swim to the end of open hours from 7 to 7:30 p.m.

At Tuesday’s city council meeting, the owners of the concession stand that contracts to be at the pool said the change in hours helped them find workers.

“It was easier for us to find workers, way easier,” said Joan Dettmering, who along with Jen Buskerud owns JJ Enterprise.

“I think our change of hours went over really well,” said Mayor Mike Wellner. He noted there was always some concern when changes are made about how they will be taken. “There were very few negative and mostly positive comments,” Wellner said.

Dettmering commended the city for having an overall smooth pool season. She noted that the pool hardly closed this year with favorable weather and no chemical issues that have caused closures in the past.

The one area she said could use improvement is with communication. In recent years, the pool staff has used the Remind system to send out alerts to patron cellphones. Dettmering asked that the pool staff get into the habit of sending out daily messages with updates regarding weather or other things. She noted this would be helpful for them having staff scheduled.

City coordinator Joe Harris explained that between last year’s season and this season the pool manager had to redo the Remind setup and that people who got messages in the past needed to re-subscribe for them this year. “A lot didn’t sign up for the new one,” Harris said, noting that this resulted in some messages being missed.

Dettmering said going forward getting into the habit of sending out more messages would improve communication. She said it would also help to have better communication for evening rentals of the pool, noting that they only knew of two of them because Buskerud works for the school district and a third she found out about when she stopped to pick up the cash box from her employee.

In other pool action, council members reviewed the pool use data for the year and a comparison to the previous year. There were 10,597 paid patrons using the pool this year. This total does not include the free swim events held on Parkfest, no tally was kept that day. Pool usage was up slightly compared to summer 2021 which had 10,400 pool users.

Council member Laura Holmes, who regularly participates in adult swimming, said she does not think those numbers are being accurately reported noting there are more people participating than shown on the report.

“Over 10,000 patrons per season, that sounds great,” said council member Greg Knight.

Council member Mike Bub agreed and noted the pool still remains popular.

2023 projects

Council members approved hiring Ayres Associates at a cost not-to-exceed $88,000 to do the engineering for the 2023 capital projects.

The major city project will be reconstruction of Madison Street from its intersection with Wheelock Ave. for 800 feet North to the intersection of Brucker Street. Engineering for this project will be $49,800.

Harris noted that how utilities are set up there the project will include sewer and water replacement on half of the street with new surface on the entire street.

Other projects include replacing water mains along the East side of Medford Area Senior High, starting at Hwy 64 and going North approximately 750 feet to Brucker Street. The engineering portion will cost $21,000 with the project coming out of the Water Utility Budget.

The city will also be rehabilitating sewer main along South Eighth Street from the intersection with Perkins Street going North approximately 3,000 feet to the intersection with Hwy 64. The engineering cost for this work is $16,600 with the money for it coming from the Wastewater Utility Budget.