Bangor’s summer time pool season is beginning this week with one of many metropolis’s two public swimming pools closed due to a staffing scarcity.
Bangor’s Dakin Pool might be closed till the town can recruit extra employees, the town’s Parks, Recreation and Harbor Advisory Committee determined final week. Bangor’s different municipal pool, on the Beth Pancoe Aquatic Heart, might be open.
The town has additionally referred to as off its normal summer time swim lesson program due to the employees scarcity.
The Bangor metropolis council is about to debate that call throughout a workshop assembly Monday at 5:15 p.m.
The town isn’t capable of safely function each swimming pools concurrently with out sufficient lifeguards to observe them, Bangor Parks and Recreation Director Tracy Willette mentioned in a memo to metropolis councilors.
Earlier this month, Willette mentioned he had about 15 lifeguards to work on the metropolis’s two swimming pools this summer time, however wants 25 to 30 to be thought of totally staffed. Different swimming pools in Maine are additionally struggling to recruit lifeguards.
On the metropolis’s Dakin Pool, three guards often monitor the pool and one oversees the pool home.
Six guards monitor the Beth Pancoe Aquatic Heart’s pool with a further lifeguard supervising the highest of the waterslides and one other within the pool home.
Final summer time, the town was capable of function the Pancoe pool seven days per week and the Dakin Pool two to a few days per week for basic swim time.
The dearth of lifeguards left the town with three choices, based on Willette: open the Dakin Pool on an analogous schedule as 2021 and maintain the Pancoe pool closed on the times the Dakin Pool is open; maintain the Dakin Pool closed and function solely the Pancoe pool; or shut the Pancoe pool however open the Dakin Pool.
Whereas the Dakin Pool can maintain about 150 swimmers, the Pancoe pool, which opened for the season on Monday, has a capability of roughly 350 swimmers. The Pancoe pool additionally has considerably extra parking than Dakin, based on Willette.
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