A child plays on the obstacle course at the Marietta Aquatic Center in June 2019. Mayor Joshua Schlicher announced April 11 that the city will not open the aquatic center this year in order to save money in response to a recent performance audit that predicts the city’s general fund may be empty by as early as 2025. (File photo)

The City of Marietta announced last week that it will not open the Marietta Aquatic Center and that has garnered negative reactions from the community.

On April 11, Mayor Joshua Schlicher announced during a public audit meeting that the Marietta Aquatic Center, which has been a fixture in the community for more than 20 years, would not be opened this year in an effort to cut costs in response to a negative performance audit.

Community members are upset by the announcement of the city not opening the MAC and one Devola resident decided to do something about it.

Joelle Cornett started a petition on change.org titled “Help Keep the Marietta Aquatic Center Afloat!”

As of 4:06 p.m. Monday the petition has 3,542 signatures. The goal is to get 5,000 signatures.

Cornett said she has four kids under 5 and they drive by the MAC on the way to her older kids’ school and they keep saying they want to go to the MAC so she had planned on taking them this summer. She said she is “passionate about helping our youth” and she saw people commenting on Facebook and no one was doing anything so she started the petition.

“It’s definitely something people are passionate about,” Cornett said.

She said she has received at least 150 text messages and Facebook posts about the petition and the MAC closing. She is planning on going to the council meeting on Thursday to share several ideas, including having local businesses sponsoring the MAC or some family passes or the maintenance of the pool.

“If they keep taking stuff away from kids no one’s going to want to stay here to raise a family,” Cornett said.

The closest pools to Marietta are the Williamstown Pool and the Devola Pool.

Williamstown City Councilman Marty Seufer said, ‘”I assume we would have an increase in the amount of kids using the pool” since the Marietta pool will be closed.

He said the city didn’t think that there would be an increase in the number of people using the pool until they saw a Times article about the mayor’s announcement that the MAC will not be opening this year. He said it is something that he is sure that council will discuss to be ready for an increase in people coming to the pool.

The East Muskingum Civic Association runs the Devola Pool and East Muskingum Civic Association Treasure Jennifer Schenkel said, “I think it’s sad for the city to close the bigger city pool like that. I am sure we’ll see an influx of daily admissions and maybe some memberships.”

She said the Devola pool is smaller so they will have to take a look at their capacity and how many lifeguards they have to see if they have enough people on staff to deal for a larger group of people.

The MAC closure may have an effect on local tourism as well.

Marietta-Washington Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Director Deana Clark said, “the closure of the Marietta Aquatic Center will undoubtedly have an impact on the tourism in our area.”

She said the MAC has been a popular attraction with visitors and residents and people come in from other areas, like McConnelssville. She said that the CVB features the MAC in the kids section of its visitors guide and on its website.

“It will affect our area youth more so than even visitors,” Clark said, because “they use it for recreation and social activities.”

She said she understands this was not an easy decision for the city.

“We hope this is just a one year thing,” Clark said,.

Professional Pool Management managed the MAC for the city of Marietta PPM owner Mike Bishman confirmed and he said that he has been officially informed the pool will not open this year.

“We typically have around 45 staff (members),” he said of how many staff he employs to run the pool and he had told them about the closure.

Bishman has heard about the city’s plans for the pool.

“From what I’m told they’re hoping to reopen next season,” Bishman said.

Schlicher confirmed that “the city is not going to open (the MAC) back up.”

He said is going through the process of talking to vendors right now to get it opened back up, but the city will not run or manage the pool.

He said the city is looking for a nonprofit or someone who is already established who won’t have to start from scratch to manage the pool.

According to Schlicher the city pays the current vendor $200,000 a year to manage the pool including running concessions, payroll, admissions, etc., and they get a portion of the admissions revenue. The city does the maintenance and receives some of the admissions revenue. He said it is around $100,000 a year in revenue.

The city pays the maintenance costs and utilities, so altogether it costs the city a total cost of more than $300,000 a year to run the pool, Schlicher said.

Schlicher said the city will cancel the contract with its current vendor and enter into a new contract and the new organization that manages the pool will get to keep concessions and part of the admissions revenue.

He said the city will see how the first year goes and then discuss a possibly higher revenue share in future years.

The city would continue to pay for heavy maintenance costs, such as pump and equipment replacements, filter maintenance, etc., which he expects to cost around $20,000 a year.

Schlihcer said the city will also pay the utilities. He said the electricity cost $25,000 last year but he expects that cost to be higher in the future because the utility company has talked about rates raising as much as 20%.

Schlicher said the city offered the new arrangement to the current contractor but they were not interested in that kind of agreement. He said that is when the city decided to announce that the city will not be opening the MAC this year. The city thought about raising ticket prices but that would have a negative effect on people who want to come to the pool.

“The end of this month we want to have something firm,” Schlicher said about an expected agreement date.

He plans to make an announcement once an agreement is reached.

“The majority of the folks I’ve talked to understand the situation we’re in,” Schlicher said about what he has heard from community members.

He said that those community members would rather see some operational changes than things like losing police officers.

“We just can’t do it anymore the way we’re doing it,” he said of the city being the one to run the pool.

There is a question of whether there is money from the J. Francis and Lillian Strecker Smith Fund that is supposed to be used for the MAC each year.

The MAC was built in 2004. It was paid for by money from the fund according to Schlicher. He said the city has not received money from the fund for the pool since the original gift.

Heather Allender, president and CEO of the Marietta Community Foundation, said that when Lillian Strecker Smith passed away she left money to the MCF which became the J. Francis and Lillian Strecker Smith Fund and she gave a separate gift to the city of Marietta that has nothing to do with the MCF or the funds it received. She said she is not sure if any other organizations received funds from Lillian Strecker Smith at that time.

Michelle Dillon can be reached at mdillon@newsandsentinel.com