The civic board that governs Juneau’s swimming pools will not be dissolved in May when its three-year charter expires. It’ll continue to function through July 2019 while alternative governance models are studied.
The Aquatics Board was created following a 2014 ballot measure. At the time the downtown pool faced closure.
City Manager Rorie Watt told the Juneau Assembly it’ll eventually have to decide on a long-term strategy.
“I don’t object to extending the current model for a year but I do have to point out that it’s not a great model and it really is not tenable over the long run,” he said at a Wednesday committee meeeting.
The Aquatics Board was never able to hire and fire its own staff director. It relies on the parks and recreation and aquatics directors hired by the city manager’s office.
“There is a little bit of – I’m just going to say organizational tension there – that’s a difficult model without a clear line of authority,” Watt added.
The Aquatics Board appealed to the Assembly on Monday to allow it to hire its own director independent of the city manager’s office. It also suggested the city consider third-parties to run the pools.
Assemblymember Jesse Kiehl was against that idea. So was Loren Jones who pushed to take contracting the pools out off the table.
“I just really think that we want to avoid months and months of emails and controversy and fear among the public that we’re going to go to some agency outside of Juneau to run the pools,” Jones said. “I think we should eliminate it now.”
But Kiehl and Jones were overruled. The Assembly didn’t act on any of the Aquatics Board’s suggestions.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated when the measure was on the ballot that created the aquatics board. It was in the 2014 election, not 2015.
