Reprinted from The Connecticut Post © Copyright 2010
February 14, 2010

By Meg Barone

TRUMBULL -- First Selectman Timothy Herbst does not want the town to drown in a sea of debt, which is why he asked the Town Council to rescind a plan to include a $5 million natatorium as part of the Trumbull High School renovation project.

He does, however, recognize the need for a new town pool, and said he plans to explore a public-private partnership, perhaps with the YMCA, as was done in Greenwich, Darien and New Canaan.

"I'm not opposed to a community pool ... We have a YMCA in our town that doesn't have a pool (indoors)," Herbst said. The Lakewood-Trumbull YMCA, actually in Monroe, has three outdoor pools that are open only from late May until early September.

"If you want to maximize revenues to offset the cost of construction, you're in a better position to do that with a true community pool that can be used at all hours of the day versus a pool that you can only use at certain times," he said, referring to state educational reimbursement requirements.

The state rejected the town's application for a $750,000 reimbursement for the pool construction as part of the high school renovation project because it would be used during school hours by non-education entities such as the town's recreation department and community organizations.

Herbst said the town could have qualified for the $750,000 reimbursement if he and Superintendent of Schools Ralph Iassogna agreed to co-sign a letter stating that the new pool would not be used between school hours.

"How can I look the taxpayers of this town in the eye and justify spending $5 million for a pool that we cannot even use between the hours of 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.?" Herbst said. "In essence, the pool would have to sit empty for us to get the reimbursement. There is no way we would be able to meet all of our community needs, including the high school's swim teams, from 3 o'clock in the afternoon to 9 o'clock at night," he said.

"In this economy, $750,000 is a lot of money when your town debt is already at $129 million and you have a pension fund that's only funded at 38 percent," Herbst said.

The Hillcrest Middle School pool, which serves as the community pool, is used every day for open public swim sessions, learn-to-swim programs, water aerobics classes, swim teams from Trumbull and St. Joseph high schools, the Trumbull Pisces swim club and other programs.

"The pool gets a lot of use. There's not enough pool time to accommodate all programs. It's the most used sports/community venue in the town of Trumbull," said Thomas P. Collins Jr., president of the Trumbull Pisces. and a proponent of the new THS natatorium.

Herbst said a public-private partnership would allow the town to increase pool time without increasing its debt burden, and the Town Council agreed, voting down the THS pool last week.

"We're on the cusp of having far too much bonded debt," said Chadwick Ciocci, the Town Council's majority leader. "At the moment it's just not affordable to the town. We have $129 million in bonded debt and that's not including the $60 or $70 million that we have yet to bond for the high school renovation and addition project."

Ciocci said Herbst's public-private partnership concept is "the best alternative."

Kathleen McGannon, a former Board of Finance member and chairwoman, said that idea could take years. She thinks it was a mistake to take the pool proposal off the table before considering other options, including the cost to rehab Hillcrest's pool.

"The residents of the town of Trumbull lost here," Collins said. "We had an opportunity to build a pool for $5 million, of which we were going to get reimbursed $750,000, plus we already spent $250,000 in architecture fees that are non-refundable. Interest rates are at an all-time low now. We have to address it at some point. In the long run it's only going to cost us more money to either build a pool or rectify the problem at Hillcrest."