Memorial Pool committee hoping for more from city on $4 million rebuild project

Finance committee plan only includes $750,000 next year for pool 

Jacob Sciammas hopes some La Crosse city council members change their minds this week.

The council’s finance committee votes Thursday on a capital improvements plan that includes only $725,000 for next year towards the $4 million rebuild of Veterans Memorial Pool.

Sciammas, head of the city’s Memorial Pool committee, thinks a bigger commitment would drive private donations towards the project but the glacial pace of the pool rebuild is nothing new to him.

“We’re all learning through this process,” he said. “Some things seem to get done faster than others. This one’s been pretty long.

“I guess the length is ensuring that we’re going to be successful because we’re not going away and the community is itent on making sure it happens.”

Sciammas says a just-announced $10,000 donation from the Ho-Chunk should also help towards generating more private giving. The check will be presented to the pool committee Tuesday.

That donation is seen as seed money by supporters of the pool.

“The city has said they’re going to fund a large portion of it and it’s our hope that we’ll come up with, maybe a million dollars to help out,” Sciammas said.

Even that, however, might not be enough.

“I think those are converastions that the city council is having and we can just hope that pitching in and making a difference will make things get done sooner, rather than later,” Sciammas said.

The pool has been closed for over two years after the city determined that yearly repairs were becoming too costly.