A Pool Prediction

I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction.

But first, a little discussion:

There seem to be “a lot” of people upset about the pool soon to be finished in Rexburg. I’m not exactly sure from where the upset stems. Some of what I’ve read is that people are mad that the city is building an outdoor pool complex during an economic downturn. Some are also mad the pool isn’t an all-season pool. Some are also mad that the pool is being built through a local improvement district or some such urban renewal finagling.

A blogger for the local paper has basically read the writing on the wall from all the people telling them the pool is bad, a bad, a baaaaaaad idea and condemned the city for pursuing the pool over the reasoned voices of the Pappy O’Dan’l constitchency. The blogger, Robert Patten, cites a lot of anecdotal information, from letters to the editor to “nonscientific” polls conducted on the paper’s website.

So the cranks who write the letters and the people who follow the old Internet adage of “vote early and vote often” are the reasoned masses behind this quasi-official rancor?

I find it funny that the pool naysayers insist they haven’t been listened to. Various groups within and without the city government have been proposing and exploring how to pay for a new pool since at least the early 1990s. The naysayers are simply not getting exactly what they want, so they claim they’ve not been listened to. That’s one of the oldest public-outcry tricks in the book, second only to making the outcry known to the local paper. Yeah, we got trouble, right here in River City.

And maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe the majority of folks living in Rexburg are as upset about the pool or its various orbiting mini-scandals as Patten says.

Nevertheless, here’s the prediction: When the pool opens, it’s going to be crowded. And remain crowded. And the summer after that. And the summer after that. Those who use the pool probably won’t remember what mayor or city council members pushed the project through – though, rest assured, there will be a self-congratulatory plaque put up somewhere – but they’ll be pleased the pool is there for them to use.

Used under the fair use doctrine for commentary purposes.