i think where just to bring us up to date the pool is a very old hundred years old and it has come to the end of its life so the idea of somehow continuing to repay every store and keep that facility going is not it's just not going to happen we cannot do it at the state board of health the department of public out and the town board expelled have told the select that the pool either needs to be on a path for reconstruction they will close it down permanently i think most people in belmont view the swimming pool in the summertime as a really wonderful  to this town you know it's a way that people meet each other when they move to belmont kids from different elementary schools get to know each other people have fun at the pool and we also have the opportunity for children to have lessons and i think i think we all think that that is a very important thing for children especially since we live in an area close to the ocean and with lots of other bodies of water water under concord have always over to the pond so that's an elevation we have to respect and maintain one of the issues here and again the water in the pool it's a combination of rain water and ground water is that this is a lot elevated over here and this building was first built to actually be intact after the building back side will come through out of the pool for obvious reasons now security with a fence that's used the way most bathhouse are used this better off making a more generous toilet area showering area where if somebody does come to change they have you know the ability to do that privately by you this is about you space and again we can use the space better in a renovated building both here another  challenging site with water it always has been because to do it water coming off the hill where these were done in ninety four the stones and the drainage that will help we have to make sure that we accommodate that and respect those conditions  concern sun safety for both well staff are here all the time as well as for the patrons in the bay and there's people as you can see with a pool that's deep or that shallow on both sides it's actually fairly deep it's one almost two feet little by there's no ability to do laps with me because you can only go from one side to the other and at some point you start hitting the bottom you and we don't lose them and a lot of the trees thank came up over here will look at it sort of just sprung up because of the history of the park they're not necessarily native some are fairly invasive and you know look at cleaning up that whole adage you know we have to respect whatever we do here to the neighbors and improve the park as well as an improving the circulation a walkway up along the thanks once again welcome we're so delighted that everybody came this evening i think i wish there had been more but hopefully people will be able to see this evening on t v not tonight but in the future so my name is and i am the chair of the underwood pool building committee and this is an exciting evening i think because i think rebuilding and replacing the underwood pool and bath house there are really exciting projects for the community people who have spent summers at the pool people who have especially those who have grown up here and the children who use the pool today all think of the pool as a real gathering spot for the summer and i think people who have grown up here and have gone away still think with fond memories of the days they spent at the pool and the kinds of activities that went on it's a wonderful place for children to meet each other for families to meet each other and for people to have a pleasant afternoon and for kids to have wonderful swimming lessons but all of those things are important for a town but the pool in the pool house have served the town very well and for almost all of the twentieth century and but for years we have complained about the limitations of the pool there's no lap swimming you catch a feed on the bottom of the pool now we can dive nobody goes into the bath house unless it's absolutely necessary so all of those things have their limitations and i just feel that this is sort of the same as it goes on in a person's house for a long time you live with the limitations of your house and then all of a sudden it comes to the point where everything has to be replaced or refurbished and i think we're at that point now with the pool we have been told by the state department of public health and also our own local board of health that the bath house does not meet code the swimming pool leaks the filtration system has always it's a if you situation and the d p w here works very hard to make sure that we have good water water quality in the pool but everything is slowly disintegrating and so this is the time that we need to replace the pool if we don't replace it the board of health has told us that the pool will have to close down permanently and i think we don't want that to happen and so now we finished with the twentieth century we're into the twenty first century and we can think about a pool for the next century so i think it's important that we all gather together to explore the kinds of things that we can have in a new pool building committee is the most of the members of the building committee are here we have people from the recreation commission we have staff from the recreation department and we have our pool designers here tonight and because this is the night we want to hear from you we're going to have a short presentation by the designer and then we want to get your thoughts about what you think we should have in a new pool what do you think we need what are the other things we may not need but we might desire there pools that you have seen that you think we could oppy some of the ideas from that pulled and we are going to see some have a power point presentation from the pool designers and then we will have a discussion about what we've seen or any ideas that may have stimulated and we can do three things we can speak at the microphone if you want to present an idea talk to us about something  you can write your idea down on a piece of paper which we have here and some pencils and then at the end of the meeting you can take a post it and you can write a little something on the post it and you can put it on the your favorite picture or your least favorite picture iraq make a comment about something that you see in one of these pictures that you think would be important for us to consider we are just at the beginning of this project it's after these public meetings that we will then get together that i think we will go into the presentation and then we will hear from the designers  h the building committee is here as i said project back attacked and this is the agenda for the evening yeah you can see the members of the building committee and i am sorry you can see the members of the building committee the names of the people are all very good citizens who are working hard on this project and as the who's buying team is and also the people from the town government that i working with us on this we have chosen pink and company to do the do the work for us they are the liaison between us and the designer and then us and also the contractor when this goes forward there are very important for the success of the project and we are working closely with them as well as with the architects this is the timeline for the for the project it's been going on as you can see from june two thousand and twelve we've been moving forward until we are here in september when the building committee was appointed and we are at the beginning stages of forming a sc design and this is the anticipated schedule going forward i hope to be working hard between now and january january we will present the project and the s to the board of selectmen and at that point the board of selectmen we hope will approve the language of a debt exclusion which we would then have on town election day on april first the debt exclusion i'm sure you all know is the way in which we raise money for a particular project that is above and beyond the money that we have in the town budget last night the community preservation committee runs the community preservation act money voted to use two million dollars of that fund to help but the cost of this bill that will be very helpful and then we would now meeting appropriates that of course then we would the amount of the debt exclusion would be much less now that would be very helpful way and with that i'm going to turn it over to the designers site what we look for and what we know the goal of this project is we need to improve the pool that you have now is being replaced and what we need to do is make it a safer pool to make a pool that everyone can use from infants to seniors how many in all sorts of recreational activities lap swimming beaches potentially diving you know other water features slides we need to write a bathhouse that is code compliant and that people who want to use a big detriment of a lot of old pools is that with that someplace where people would stay for a longer period of time not just coming to have a swimming lesson and leaving or going there it is there for the camp only you want a family to show up you know that could be the parents it could be the grandparents taking the family there for an afternoon which is really what you're striving for in creating an aquatic facility you want to minimize operational costs water usage energy usage the op actual and power hours used to actually maintain this pool while we're doing all this we also want to maintain the character of the stork pool it's a pool that everyone is very fond of things that are going to have to change a little bit but again we help we feel that looking at some historic understanding historic nature of this pool and the way we would approach it will try to respect what was there now with a new facility that this kyle want to talk a little bit about the site i want to turn this over to him now landscape architect but one thing we don't want to get as we're studying the pool is that it's part of a much it's part of a park very much unity but that while we're planning the pool in the bath house access to it want to think about how we can some of that may be simple things like caring for existing trees but it's also looking at all of them various fencing benches trash receptacles so that feels like it all has been addressed again like st on the bottom the rectangle sorry the rectangle in the left is the current playground and then there's a large hill that's used for sliding in just passive use of park and the green circles in the center are the pine trees in the one large oak tree so we have some general improvement goals for the project associated with the pool project that we want to improve circulation what that means is let's start by what the restaurant circulation how do people get to the site either from school street and or a concord av or even from the library so that our people in the neighborhood can enjoy the park without having to get in a car now we don't want to forget about the car either there are a few parking spaces on cottage very close to concord half but there are ways that we can improve tho we need to question are they in the right place is it the right amount plus we have to bring them up to one of the challenges of the park is that there is so much of a great change between school street on the high side and  and to make all the almost three levels of the part acted is a bit of a challenge and to do it in an accessible way so that everyone in the town but with that something will be considering and integrating any one of the schemes and then we want to present in the view of the park and whatever we owe it off concord avenue is pretty important the position of the bathhouse where the fencing is around the pool but the fencing looks like so that is very much a seasonal syllabi as a year around interest and then a traction attractive element down and then we want to make sure that those large existing trees within the middle of the park are cared for on we do corrective work but we also protect them during ruction consider the trees around the edges of the park but also then think about where we should plant new trees as part of the i'm going to go through some of these goals one by one to give you example so that gives you a little bit of thought or you know a photo to go with some of these bullet points so you can comment and give us a little bit more feedback one thing we see is that on cottage street that there is a continuous sidewalk on the opposite side not the park side and not on the park side one thing that i think would be a great improvement is if we could have a continuous sidewalk with full street to cut to concord have put on the park side and that would allow us to connect by ground to the people there are some challenges this photo that's left is part of the sidewalk that exists think of me that used to be there was the back a sidewalk to kind of push in and the sidewalk goes down only like a foot wide and then on the photo on the right shows where the sidewalk doesn't exist at all i mention connecting the different levels of the park of these three photos are from schools can go from different levels and we have to do it in an accessible way some of that is simply just universal access so that people who are able bodied or disabled and use all aspects of the park also just looking at commonsense things where  e the cross walks that cross cottage or school or concord ave do they have good sightlines are they usually maintained do they enter or exit the park in places that make sense i mentioned caring for the existing trees these pine trees are really spectacular in here a long time and provide a lot of scale and benefits to the park you have to be mindful of course of the proximity of the pool from beef needle perspective active shade  and then we want to care for them during auction so there's a couple diagrams here just to again kind of tell you how we think it this early stage of a project but this is the same orientation that i had on that existing conditions one could have a noose on the right on the bottom of on the left these yellow lines and arrows are and chill best in roots the imagine in the summer when the pools in use you want to drive here and all the spaces on the street are booked up and find a space there could be an opportunity to park in the wellington school if we all decided that was a good use i mean there's a parking lot there why not when the schools not use that were the case there's already a cross walk in school street how do you get from that parking lot to the pool in a safe way across the street and you could follow the sidewalk on school to cottage and then if the street sidewalk in us that was your route to the pool another alternative would be would we want to pursue a route through the park in other words down the grassy hill now you suggest that a little bit there's a bit of a zigzag in that line because you can't go straight down the hill it's too steep to be any kapil sibal so the reason i bring that up in i have but they're considering the sliding hill we would have to do a bit of regrading to make that accessible make the slope a steep which could impact the of single plane of that s and of course how those these different connections meet up with the ground and then get you to the pool or also conquered avenue other things on this diagram think about the killer circulation so in the about where the pool is we want to have a vehicular drop off but you can imagine family comes in the van they've got a bunch of kids and all the things that they bring out both the day and there still is going to be search for a parking spot  pull off right at the bathhouse but off most of the people and go find your spot or we may say no that much congestion in front of the bathos to do that we'd rather have a park and we also have to think about how serve the bathhouse in terms of the people use and maintenance and make sure that that use that maintenance access doesn't  and then it just a few other things more on less tangible less on the circulation side trees that are right in the middle that's something we want to protect when i've suggested a consistent row of trees along cottage street what's happened is there used to be a much shorter fence around the pool rate and then they put up our fence inside of that between those two fences a lot of weedy trees grew and that's what we have is a tree edge on cottage street but i think this is our chance to question that then out some of those things or remove a sieve or weed trees and have something that really is deliberate represents a really good image for the park and i've already mentioned that you from concord avenue to the pool and to the bath house is really important that we want this to be something that belmont proud of so i think that's what i wanted to talk about in terms of the site to kind of give you an eye on things to give us feedback on other ways this can tell you more about the bathhouse this bath house this past year one of the biggest issue is the entire complex that the pool and the bath house is not violent for people with disabilities the bathhouse you go from the walkway you go down the have to come steps are there one of the things we're looking to do on this whole project is the bring the whole grade up so the wall will be roughly level with the walkway which is actually of that runs and takes the wellington brick over to the park looking at what we did in the study was a bath house that accommodates a number of almost six hundred six hundred plus bathers in the appropriate areas of the conditions at the site there are issues with his a bath house that old there's damage to the foundation is not of age we have issues with the structure where it's there settlement the roof the amount of work that we would end up doing on this building to try to reinforce it we have to bring up and the roof structure would not take new loading or the new apartments here there's no ventilation and i think the bigger is the issue though it does not function in a way that a bath house should anyone the bath house should function as a whole people enter the complex after member can check them in walk in and you walk either into the men's and women's room or to a family changing room and directly to the pool not a reversed area but also the amenities within the bath house deeds in the third a lot different can do with natural ventilation natural lighting to make a much more healthy well let's space is less energy provide family changing rooms and i have an image of what that is so that if i get my daughter look at is the location of the bath house or the current location was placed for good reason on the far side again this is not these are just and locations that we're going to look at and these and being we could put them you know facing  back in between where a pool would go and conquer have we could put in a long street which then becomes a large fast along the side but also comes above the neighbors across the street it split it up part of the building  where it is now in terms or new in the footprint provide other additional space where the filter building if you don't know that on the far end of the wall which is about taurine and would also get all that above grade or some combination thereof or again we were being asked as part of our idea to look at where we can put bathhouse built their building and national space in this facility so again those are all the options that we're going to be looking at this is a fairly traditional layout for a bath house in this way where you would enter but have areas of oil it's thinks and then showers and then either the showers will provide the actual changing of people actually change at the wall or will provide  walk hours boil it wrong little space a lot of advantages and we've designed these horrible wall for ventilation but it also serves occupy greater population by that these are used much more to put it into the filter and then discharging it it's a problem because of some sedimentary and when you discharge it which is happens every week and a half week week and a half when you have to change the filter media that's more water than and that's a lot easier to operate on a day to day basis use now rather than using any acids in the wall is for environmental standpoint it's a lot safer for environment as well as workman and any general area again providing wittman that is runs on its own but also is automated enough that can for right a signal to not only that somebody in the building but to staff so there's a problem with a fault in the system you can see in a text all when you can know that there's an issue with the pool at two o'clock on a sunday morning wasn't that woman but those things happen in i've been in too many situations where equipment is running filter trips and nothing happens and they walk in the following day the pool's been down and it's at a point where there's a lot of recovery time that's needed but again we look at systems that themselves provide the ability for quick response and repair and maintenance and the existing pool very large based on a square footage you have people but that does that triggers a significant amount of our oil fixtures bathhouse the it's a very interesting profile because what was it was an old that braided this tank and but what that does without having any diving board went out but again it became an issue of safety have to have a minimum depth for diving which you do not have any that would be something to the town share with the state inspectors review of the way the specter very well  d a fairly comprehensive list not just pull the bathhouse things up and was developed by the town to try to look at the open last season hopefully will be opened again at least for one more season or but there's a lot there are significant four back then we put the wall and we act which was begun at that point was a band aid went very low amount of money at work by putting a trying to replace the filter at that time that did not happen but again so that was a band aid that again you know you look at them you can have what we'll call an open water which is one large open area where you'll have shallow areas or depth of lap swimming you can have an area for diving but really the vision of the pool is set up mostly with both  body of water we can create areas that are well defined also provide for better programming options for half as well as for just are you going to shallow area smaller of smaller children or people who just want to walk up to their ankles or to a separate area if you buy it in in this pool had a connection for defined lap area and that lap area serves as an area for water truly a water aerobics a pool like this for children learning how to swim problem with a pool of very soft water areas bait separate segregated areas for recreational swimming or exercise just getting in the water or for more active activities within the body of water again it's sort of sometimes when the you if you watch out these are open swimming they sort of solve of segregation will have that it's a great area older kids may go somewhere else by in lines in so people want to have an area again you're all in one body of separated the body of water from other one heaping the same volume or surface area that you have events through all the banished to that is that if something happens in one pool they'll have a second pool that's brought the shutdown or in eight until it again or something happens with the filter system goes down you still have another operation but the problem is it's two filter system those are more cost associated number want to buck but there's also this a more cost in operating have more pumps or filters or power being used that's something that we will look at if there was an advantage to that in and primary advantage that you have segregated body of water that can be isolated if need be more than but then you'd have the as you can see from some of the women who will images that tom has just shown the whole idea of what up is has changed pretty dramatically over the years but i'm going to breeze through some of  families we're all believe fairly familiar with the the idea of a zero depp's certainly with the ball that is there now a great way of the great component allow the youngest expertise is a very simple way of incorporating an added interactive or non interactive feature that can provide a really young kids or enemy kids with with a little bit of fun so the it's it's not just a an open body of water there's things to do for all ages some communities prefer to go a little bit further with with actual water features elements that there's a whole host of different types of water features that we go to see on the boards to the side that again further the idea of have making the pool not just a place for a lap swimming but more of a place  again there's many different types of sots lives for many different ages that's certainly something that we have found is a incredible draw for a very large contingent of ages mall it's really it's almost like a river current there simply as a recreation or we've included it elsewhere for cardio vascular exercise where people  or swim against the currents but it's really a multi even though it seems like it's a really fun recreational element it can be seen as something a little more than that diving there's been a lot of talk about diving  as many different options here types of diving boards is should there be a separate diving tank or is a diving tank paired with a larger lap booming for lap  lanes up obviously there's whether or not you have women teams that use it now it's something to think about for the future has been barely a desire for lap swimming and it's something that can be incorporated into any and the really any type of of whether it's a combination pool or an open water but one thing that we really try to pay attention to is providing a generous enough space around the pool or for swim teams or from classes  just enough room to be able to really use the pool as it's intended because we want to make sure that this is really it's really a multigenerational pool want to make sure that we pay attention to things like accessibility providing ramps jallow and the pool steps rather than ladders so it's really not just focusing on the on end games of making a pool but how it's use on a regular basis and how we can make it more suitable for the greater population  a longer amount of time and not feel like they're close for comfort with everybody else and they can spread out and really for themselves shade is always always an issue whether it's for lifeguards or for the public but there are different ways of operating elements whether it's  as within the pool or outside of the pool or simple six shade structures around the perimeter and then for the facility that may be open all day of the thing to think about is  try to incorporate as many ideas as possible to make it to the immunity effort in a community design so now it's your turn if you want to go to the microphones that would be helpful because this is being taped by the media center and will be shown at another time to the people in belmont so if you wouldn't mind just using these microphones let me just repeat the question for the media and that is the question is what is the consideration for maintaining the depressed area in front of the pool it's been used all along as far skating in the winter time would you say january february and then the pool is there in the summer time for three months and so the gentleman is questioning whether we want to put anything  in that area that would diminish the use of the skating area now we are going to certainly take a look at that area and again on those diagrams that i showed with the placement of the bathhouse that was just we have to look at that as an option what's the downside of the con of that particular option takes away a good chunk of that area way there's other options where we put the bathhouse someplace else still respect that as a skating area you know we understand that as an urn a major element that was built back over it was put in actually had water which isn't really maintained any longer that's a strong element that there's a lot of people who have ties to that again we want to respect that what we do especially after hours right now there's a high fence around the pool there used to be a much lower fence when there was a lower fence it was kind of a rite of passage for high school students to swim in the pool late at night which is especially when the diving board was there was kind of a disturbance of the neighborhood at night i would strongly advocate for a high fence around whatever area you want to  a complex would have to be fenced in and i think we can do it in a way that's a little bit more leasing than what's there now with the type of fence that we put in at a minimum we put a six inch chain link fence around the entire site or the tire pool complex the bath house provides that we will meet with both the town as well as the fire department police department talk about safety off hours live just on a hue up a number of projects state after their little incident down in  fall river they had a major security upgrade all the pools which included just motion sensor lights things of that nature so that you don't want to light the pull up but take away from one of the neighbors you don't want the lights on all the time but you do want to provide some areas so that someone doesn't jump the fence the light will come on to be enough that maybe they jump in quick and then leave but there's ways of dealing with that security but fences apps that's critical would be part of the  i think the plan is to really look seriously at having a diving area again because we know how popular that has been with people and also i think the beach entry will be very helpful for young children so that they won't be stepping into was foot or two of water but thank you for those comments i good evening my name is iris ponty i grew up in belmont i was a lifeguard for mean eighteen years and i'm kind of scary and now i'm a mom of two boys so i have had like almost a full life experience of the underwood pool and i'm thrilled and excited obviously that we're here tonight talking about refer issuing it saving it and the consideration of the b shape i think is critical from an education standpoint for all the reasons that we just heard so really maintaining a good area for lessons is critical because if you go down at nine o'clock in the morning and you see how many children are benefiting from those lessons the space if it's a combined pool will need to be big enough to have an infant parent infants one class a toddler class a preschool class and even some of the older swimmers who might be embarrassed so we might want to think about having enough  third grader fourth grader to enter that space now as a guard we didn't have enough storage for all the materials that were needed all those float sticks all those rings all that stuff was all over the place and it was crazy because people would ask to borrow it no you can't and i feels awful to say no because there it is the kick boards everything so some defining spaces that are for staff and for lessons ample storage that's breathable because all of us know how bad that stuff starts to smell and it's not ok to be against the kids skin so thinking about a good open air space for the stuff to dry out well make it easier for step i have a list that's epic so i don't know i mean an email address would be more useful but thinking about the historical integrity of the pool i mean i'm a belmonte and i grew up here there are spaces that are sacred spaces and this is one of them and i have always miss that old clock there used to be a clock that was backlit when i was a little girl and no one wants an i phone anywhere near this place because it's going to go in the water or their watch that clock a nice big backlit clock so everyone's on the same time so when the lessons and the parents believe you the kids are screaming all the clock says it's time see you tomorrow that clock be there i mean i could go on stroller parking major issue you should see me trying to lift my double heaviest jogger stroller up and then in or i'm loading my kids they're running in that gate so think about stroller parking bike racks how many people would come on foot forget the parking and i love the pathways meandering through the multi tiered playground critical but what about spaces to bring your bike and all of those things so that's just a touch of my oh one more as my kids are little right now in the bathroom at the children's museum they have these safety seats in the stalls so you can actually clip your kids in and those floors are slippery there have been so many ice packs handed out because kids go down and just they're wet and they slide they bump it's scary so avoiding concussions to seats in those stalls clip your kids when you get to go to the bathroom too and then you unclip them and out you go so family bathrooms are a must i mean i think that would be a conversation because it's almost impossible to manage a group of children without other than that i'll press the case for the rest for now thank you i could tell you worked at the pool because your list is basically what i was given direct apartment now and again a lot of the ideas there too are very good you know we're at a point though where we don't we're on the detail but obviously bicycle traffic is very big here strollers addle ample areas to get an understanding how a family will arrive and part of to what we talked about or internally is that even if you can't park break near the pool which most of the times you can't when you drop off leave something and then go back up park the car then come back down to just as important as being able to park nearby  judy hanley and seen that this is a you know a historic place and beloved by everybody in belmont i was wondering if you did a feasibility study and how much it would cost to actually save the bathhouse updated bring it up to code and maybe put a small one on the opposite end you know seeing that you feel that it's not big enough to accommodate everybody because it is a historic area and i actually think it's in a great location vs moving around so if it could possibly consider saving it and maybe definitely doing something with the pool so that no changing it and then my other question is after this is all done and you've upgraded everything will the day passes the price go up to a point where won't be affordable you know to somebody who uses it for day passes seen that you know you making a great ceiling is going to cost you know a lot to to maintain it thank you i can't answer the question  about the cost of the pool tickets because i don't know the answer to that but the recreation staff is here and i'm hopeful that given the fact that it will be much are should be much less costly to run the  pool in terms of energy and the filtration system and the amount of water we use that all of that taken into consideration may well make sure that at least we can keep the pool tickets where they are and not have to raise them we have during the study looked at the building and we will look at it again to see what we could do with it if at all possible to make of the make it try to make something work out of that if whatever we do would be respectful of that building tr you know be compatible with it we understand the nature of the building and anything we do we're going to try to respect the stork nature of this park in terms of i can i can answer that question i'm the last person about the what it will charge to go to the pool but i will say is that a conversation that we are having because we start talking about how the pool laid out how the buildings are laid out on the site are going to be directly related to what their staffing is so that we don't want to do things to the pool that are going to require additional guards or additional staff to operate it you want to work within sort of the time the framework that you have now and try to maximize the shooting of people and the pool so that increases their visibility in looking at the various areas in the pool or you don't want to create situations where you have somebody just sitting in the bath  i like the size that it is now what i'm worried is that we are going to be forced to squeeze it smaller because of this bathroom ratio and because it's going to be too expensive to have to put in so many bathrooms i guess my question is is there any way around i think we looked at that are the size when he was going to be reduced in size but the amount of usable air i mean usually it's still a very very low be a very large pool but in the space that we ride even though it's less square footage it's more usable but you have large areas that can't really be programmed properly or they're all of their the same actually if i can just get back to a comment about this one lesson that was also where i understood that when we look at this we have to be able comedy swim lesson capacity if not even more than you have there now simultaneously own terms of looking at how you divide the pool or lay the pool out you have to make sure that multiple classes are the same size we don't want to make well that's going to restrict your ability to teach the class of the way you have now if nothing else we want to be able to the names lisa sereny i've been swimming at the end would pull since i was a baby i also worked there lorraine taught me how to swim but mean to and we were actually a family we really are i mean we we all interact and we bond and it's a very important part of a summer life my concern is not so much with the design but how we're going to bring this up to the voters and i'll tell you what i mean when i speak to a lot of people about this project they say to me well it's only open for eight weeks why should we vote for something for eight weeks lot of people don't use a lot of people do there are other issues that they want more but i was always wondering we have so many hot days in june we have plenty of hot days in september is there any way we could keep that will open a longer duration instead of july and august maybe june july august september and yes the lifeguards are in college but there are other people that have you know certified in lifeguarding is there any way we could utilize it more so when we bring it up to the voters they'd see that we're using it more and even maybe skating in the winter if there were any way we could but like some kind of facility that way that's a good question and  i think really it's a program out of question and there's no reason why the pool couldn't open earlier in june and close later in september but september mornings get cold but the water would warm up in you know during the  day so i think it's it's a good suggestion and one that ought to be dealt with as that we go forward with the pool and have the recreation department think about it but it is a question staffing and a question of the cost of using the filtration system and so forth so all of those things come into play but i think the question about you know why do we have a pool for eight weeks i think it's open a little more than eight weeks but the it's just a wonderful summer amenity in the town you know we don't use the hockey rink in the summer to i wash and i want to give anybody any ideas but we don't use the hockey rink in the summer time we use it in the winter time and so we do have seasonal activities and i think that it's important for it's an important amenity for the town it's one we've had for a long time it's important to give kids an opportunity to learn how to swim and it's important to give kids  recreational activity especially and also for adults to swim during the summer so i'm hopeful that people will understand that benoit and i've been at the pool in some capacity for guarding to managing the pool now for the past fifty summers so i can answer a lot of your questions  first of all we could probably open in the middle of may because this is a college is just sitting around waiting to be under employment and would love that but it might be a matter of budgeting  labor day or maybe a week or two after that is fine too but that's where we run into problems where we lose the college students but certainly the middle i'm a on is certainly plausible  back to what ira said about the service of the pool there is none better than the underwood pool for teaching especially the small and you'll never find anything like that and it serves probably four or five classes in the smaller and and equally that in the larger and also taking care of the older kids the only question i have is a smaller and being three feet and the younger kids also in that area when we have accidents there we need to shut down the whole pool because a chair has the same water and to have something separate but not  know compromise the area for the teaching is my suggestion and the deep in and it was great if we could make it deeper and we could dive in that area and maybe at the right side of the pool maybe extend a little so with that we have lap area now this is going to kill everything and it's the big question of the geese one swoop in there and we're down for the whole day and if we can come up with a suggestion that we could keep the geese out of there either a high offense netting whatever that could put us down in a minute so we need to discuss that situation also thank you very much oh i'm sorry i project called in precinct six we live in the cushing square area i really like what you presented when you considered not merely the pool but the park because really what we're considering here isn't simply in my mind it isn't simply a pool a community pool it's a community plates a congregating place and what well my question is and it's truly a question and not a proposal is if you expand your vision of the place and not only include the park but to include a recognition of the fact that there are athletic fields on the other side of concord are there attributes that can be designed which would invite people when i grew up we moved from the softball field to the pool back to the softball field to invite people to come from the athletic fields to the pools so that area would be considered more of a recreation place for the community of velm in terms of off season when the bat was not in use we have so i've done a number of bathhouses are parts of the bathhouse are left open for the shoulder season so early spring balls so they can come for asian or when these but that's something we have to think about with certainly could take a piece of the pool you know them in the room women's room or to family changing actually we open for a longer duration by overseas even for people if they're using the big round again that's just something we have to talk about operational issue but your question well yes and what i'm i have two things in mind one is that the people who would use the athletic fields would centered be the larger picture and maybe there is maybe the answer is no maybe there isn't anything to be done but it would be nice to see that more than just the things together i think it's also got opportunity for us to think about the safety of the crossing a light down there out on concord avenue where hardly anybody stops the red and yellow light maybe flashing and i think we really need to look at that if we're going to encourage even older people to cross the street so i think it's good suggestion and i think that as we go forward we should really take those kinds of things into consideration very then the other thing is that behind the library there's a stream and the street and the old hockey hole that was a holding tank so when the flooding came the water filled up the swimming pool and then that overflow went into the hockey hole before it came into our basements and feel of the basements with eight feet of water so that is a natural stream the causeway in front of the swimming pool is the causeway that the second thing that i would like to i'm thinking when we first moved in thirty five years ago the the parents would bring the children into the swimming pools to ice skate it just dawned on me can we make the showing pools and also a second skating area the lower skating area is used for hockey players and when we had small children we had to protect our children w shields we would use our bodies because the hockey players would be skating around which was all a learning process but then the the families would take the children up into the deep end and at that time it was only a three foot fence around change so it's very important to maintain that hockey hole as a holding tank but flooding the other thing would be we've lived there thirty seven years and we our boys enjoyed it so they're enjoying it i would just say that where the maintenance building is we've had to clear our home a couple of times for chlorine yeah six caping that was years ago that hasn't the residences are we endure a tremendous amount of traffic and trash candy wrappers what have you and thank you for  culver had a very small it was basically a vertical great wall of debris would come down block it i don't know how many years ago the new over it was put on it which is an angled structure and even with a large rains that we've had i don't think that's flooded if that's put in place that again we understand that's an issue and we're going to obviously keep that in mind but we understand that's at cern terms of what that area getting b into the pool and then off there was side brain structure all put in obviously which would be maintained around there well again that's certainly we understand that also we're going to look closely at what we do with street again we recognize the issues that the traffic marking try to prove that also if we do put any sort of structure there because it's going to be it's a residential neighborhood we're not going to put up you know a job building there that's going to be some effect of what you have but again one advantage i would say though pentagon how your view of the pool is that does also provide your house sort of a screen boys from the pool and that becomes ever becomes an issue so that's something we're looking at it's on our list of things we have to take into consideration as we look at how we design well look into that i mean it's been brought up before a number of pools that i've done but in terms of skating in this particular area when you have a national skating lest you have a really long cold snap on the average and i've had people do studies of it you don't get these people i know you  p people put up these plastic rinks in their backyard they spend they buy the orderly put them up you get on the average of seven and days at most of use when the ice is actually hard enough do it again and again things like that someone will bring up the street rob stafford on temple street three suggestions one of them reiterate that i think this area could be an attractive recreation area in the winter time for skating on the on the pit there and i would just encourage you if you designing the the structure to think about how that might be part of a winter skating program as well i realize at this point we don't have a plan for that but i think we could and i think it could be a really positive addition to this second suggestion you know we go to the pool early regularly in the summertime it be wonderful to have a locker or something like that a lot of the families are regular users but you're thinking about not just family changing rooms but i love to be able to have a place where i could leave all those stupid toys and not have to drag them back and forth and the third thought oh the third thought was again if you're thinking about the the  mechanicals i don't think we're going to go with that fully heated pool but i suspect that there are small changes that you could make that would make it a more usable pool in those shoulder periods you know if there's some way to you know put a solar heater in so that in september water stays warm or a little longer occurred you think about that again getting back to this point of making it the most useful recreation area i think i think i would be good for the town and i also think it'll be a much easier sell come dead exclusion time  we can say look this is not just an eight year pool this is a recreation facility that will be available for more of the year  don't we could look into heating the pool which is very it's not real common in outdoor well just from a particular in this area but again couple of people brought the idea of solar in and certainly that is something we are looking into we've done a number of facilities where  that well as i am i we did work in the pools in lexington and they actually moved their senior classes the afternoon they put the kids in when the morning when it's really cold but the seniors coming to exercises when it's a little bit warmer actually a very big they have a deep water exercise program in their diving and they give them enough time for the water to get to a reasonable thing for the people are comfortable you know as a detail talking about lockers whether or not it's something that's left iran that's not something you c actually leave but it's a building a lot of space we can we'll talk about that but what we normally see are lockers that are really just for the daytime emmy like you would see in an airport with a key or to take it out but times will put them on the outside of the building or on the back so that you can actually watch it over the there but for that ability to try to do something they have a number of uses you have to have permanent lockers which just art program which are getting very maybe you know of a hundreds of hundreds of people who get up for the next season again but once you start providing that to a thing to manage with certain lockers and storage when you're at the site don't want to it's got to be something self operated you don't want to get burden back on staff be which that was what i would have originally had i'm not sure when they went out but there was a basket system there where you'd go in there but they'd give them something a basket to give you it like this is online but again you don't want to want them doing what they're supposed to  your you cover up prince off their same thing when you're leaving at the chlorine off my body i don't want to change also you know what you want to cleanse your feet so to me that also encourages people to keep your water quality better too so the now for eating or for your families i think is really important i'd be curious to know about extending the hours i know that neighbors might not want you no more but i don't know for considering adding any additional lighting or again what the hours and what's the facility you know how can we maximize the use of the syllabi to get more people using it because if you get more people who come after work or using that facility can use after hours and expand your  revenue and so i i think interested one of my other questions if recognition or other folks here could talk a little bit about the process that they're going through to look at developing the programming whether or not you one of the questions of the polls always been the outlier and who is actually overseeing its maintenance and is going to be the champion for the pool in town and lastly i was curious to know about technology you might be looking up for the filtration i don't know that these new iron ization there are different types of technologies that i read about maybe they're more for indoor pools but i'd be curious to know what the state of the art is that might be feasible for  i'm just going to speak to a couple of them and then i'll ask them time to do it but i think in terms of the recreation department and so forth that we are really at the very beginning of this process and so i think as we get started with the s tic design that i think the recreation commission and the department will be brought in to have some discussions and to think about ways in which we can either increase the programs i change the programs or keep the ones we have but all that is  under discussion and i think your point about who owns the pool is a good one and i think again i think that very seriously and will think about that as we move on so that i think that's a good  problematic to operate but in terms of placement of lights but again we have to consider the neighborhood around as a part offs but we put lights in you may want the building across the street but in general good pick lights that woman at the surface but then that becomes an operational issue for that i think oh outdoor shout or showers is actually i haven't done a pool i've been doing pools now since ninety eight and i haven't put it i haven't done a pool recently that they not have on again under the cold they refer to his rain station this one as i make them a shower there's a whole sorts of things that bells and whistles that go off but again it's an amenity that certainly helps improve the quality of water because you supposed to go into the bath house shower before you go to the pool what happens is people get out of the pool  suntan lotion get somebody to rinse off prior to coming in and also almost become something not their job and a lot of times staff actually see no please go back over rinse out also something important even to put on sort of on the way out so as you're leaving rinse off anything from you can do that well like a beach where you try to get the sand off it something that we always would put in part for a pool or even if this pool is extended from any of may through the end of september a sand filter but the basic sand filters the primary filtration and you can look at other help you reduce the amount of boring that you use we've used u v again a lot of those will come down they're still very expensive relatively speaking a matter of time that you have the pull up but it's something we can put in or you can put provisions in a later date add them i from the belmont thought nursery school and also the wellington nursery schools they come to that playground every day every day during the year around so it's a fantastic open space to play and i hope that we can that sense of open  playground would be open throughout the truck and part of what we will be doing is through once we have an idea of what this is we will look at but all the issues are relative ruction and build into the d you know on these three days we're going to be doing this operation which is a pump and it's a pneumatic done but this is going to be noisy so maybe you want to understand that again we worked understand that but with certain things we can't do you know the playground unless we are doing work on a pathway there might be some problems or some time that we can use the park but again there would be notification or we would try to work around it so that if it's a it's an element that beaucoup was are using we try to me in that that's part of the process that i'm just again i did it back but he will be in now reaching out to a call of all the placeholders or the stakeholders in this town that have some say on that he will be meeting with at some point if they are feeling in their understanding and try to corporate what they what their urns are wrestling my voice to the people who've talked about the benefits of having some variation of a either a combination pool or separate pools or something that obviously allows for family use and sort of the greatest use for the most people i have two small children and i sort of have seen in the lessons at other pools the drawbacks of lessons in open water pools and and i think there are many and i think obviously expecting the historic nature of the shape of the distinctiveness of the pool great in obviously would be better and be easier to accomplish both of those things with some of those types of will also i walking around the neighborhood it certainly strikes me that adding a sidewalk all the way along cottage street would be a big improvement in terms of just park access even if there were nothing to be done to the pool at all that's just sort of clear and parent and i'm just one of someone i know a couple people raise the solar issue and i might have missed this so i apologize if i do if there were to be a new house would there be actually photo voltaic on that fracture it does seem that given the seasonal nature of the facility having photovoltaic on the structure would probably correspond with the time of year when you get the greatest benefit from that but i just want to ask about that because the cost ends up being if on what they like and that your oh your operating costs are set between a certain time frame on the building at this point that you're generating power which is really not using it the building which is going dig i think it's even below sea level and i think if you dug deep you might find about one hundred pairs of sneakers or a child or two and i think if i thought you might be raising up the pool and if there was an opportunity to maybe raise that up a little bit that would help tremendously and maybe we can put a little surface in there but not compromise the ice skating in the winter thank you ok thank you for the suggestion my name is tracy dorothy and about ten years ago when we were considering belmont one of the things and it's just a little thing but one of the things that i remember was driving through concord have and seeing kids skating on the on the the outdoor rink and also seeing the pool and thinking what a wonderful community this make must be so i echo all the sentiments to preserve all of that and i think one of the things that is really important to be considered is how we can make this tool or facility really something that appeals to a lot of different people and we've talked about a lot of different ideas of how to preserve that skating area and i think it's great if we could do something with that pool house to do that and i agree  know that's a swamp i live right down the street from it so i walked by it all the time so there we got to look at some some different ideas for that the other thing that i hope that the town is doing is really looking at wells could use this pool like some of the different swim teams the dolphin swim team the belmont aquatic team i know for some of us who have children that are on the belmont aquatic team that's a team that swims from september all the way through july and we've talked before that pool in the high school is having a lot of issues and i know last year our kids couldn't swim in that pool so i think it's just worth even just giving a second look at whether or not we can do something at this pool where maybe we could use it for a longer period of time like the whaling community pool that has a retractable roof is something to consider i think when while we're at this junction thank you and i think that we will be looking at those kinds  of different activities to be had at the pole and i think if we have lap swimming in the lanes that that would be very helpful for the swim team so i think we'll continue to look at that to me again and the suggestion i could provide is we have problems on sunday mornings and time before our pool opens at nine o'clock and it's because of the inactivity at those periods and the steels are active so the geese a looking for places to go so we could fill that void time with outside activities and rental time tree in terms of filtration we're starting with possible water and pool makeup and we're still having to treat that to get to the level that we need to be able to swim in terms of or in a shaded treatment of the water  lot of the filtering a lot of other work that would be necessary actually try to use that water in the second issue that we may be able to or use this pool for longer hours rather than installing wide systems now when you look we could use the pool later into the evening during part of the summer no question about that it's light until now i think until eight and i think you know we could open another half hour or three quarters of an hour for a few weeks consider going up to a level it's reasonably dry to make a field out of it because everybody's talking about we don't have enough deals feels when there might be adequate for a soccer field but to use it in still have it pressed enough so all the opportunities we have that i think you know having looked at the well all these years but the world's really progressed since i was a kid using appall and i'm excited that we have these opportunities ahead for belmont  and i have a question and i don't know me answer but i think the idea of putting shade in is a great idea because right now i think the far side of the pool just is blazing  i'm wondering if we couldn't combine the opportunity for shade with the dolls so that we could actually angele you know we could generate we don't have to think just about bath house as the opportunity for solar we could also i know that they do parking lots where they have solar cells but then create the covered parking that also might help with the geese issue because the reflection off solar would probably deter the geese and it would create shade and then maybe of opportunities for heating the pool i don't mean that's a stretch i don't really understand i'm from california and all pools are heated so i don't really this is sort of i don't understand why we would need a pool but if we could generate that and if that made a difference in our ability use a pool longer hours and and more of the year thank  you no certainly shade structure of any sort is a perfect location for any sum any sort of solar application we've done that a number by how to get the pens on the how it's place and what we use it for there's a feeling it becomes a cost issue terms of the operation of the pool what it costs actually do it unfortunately now in terms of getting a permitted heat up will fall into the energy code buyers having over which is an operational issue making these two questions and then we could move to the third phase in which you might put a posted on the on the pictures of something you especially like or if you have another comment to make and write it down my name is sikorsky and i live right up here and selwyn road this is really exciting to think about all the opportunities that we can do here in belmont and one of the things that i would also like to stress for a pool that i think would be really fun for the kids is i know you talked about some of the water that are possible putting in i think those would be something i think it's important you know i think some of these sprays i come up out of the water the and brawlers i mean they provide hours of attainment for the children and i just think it would be a nice a nice feature as well as i know we talked about the diving board but i don't know if it's possible to have more than one diving board and oh sometimes when we did have the diving board here the line to get on the diving board was very very long it's the it's a big attraction for the kids the other point i just wanted to make is i know tracy also mentioned this about the possibility of a retractable roof i am also a parent of the belmont aquatic team  member and i go to this resort in vermont where they have outdoor pools and in the in the winter time they have these domes are almost like these blow up domes that they just put right over and you sort of walk right out of the pool house and you go into the pool and i  again i think would like to stress of this any way possible the recreation department to look at a maximizing the use of this pool and perhaps turning it part of it or all of it into your own facility by one of these domes or something  i think it would be very right we will take that under consideration and i hope you'll choose a couple of ideas that you think a good for the kids right now there's two open space free also outside the having the hill but one who parked directing everything all the way across with them or it looked like you guys were addressing that pretty well but it is a bigger and the pool house and we would again love to have more people come thank you