Mansfield mayor goes to social media to discuss future of public swimming pool

MANSFIELD — Temperatures are soaring in the city this week with highs expected in the 90s every day through Saturday.

Yet the City of Mansfield has no swimming pool in which residents can cool off in again in 2024. This marks the third summer in a row that a city of 48,000 residents will be forced to beat the heat without a single public pool.

The largest city in Richland County has had no public swimming pool since the Liberty Park facility closed permanently in August 2021 due to major maintenance issues.

Mansfield Mayor Jodie Perry, who took office in January, said Monday she has heard the questions about the lack of a pool in the city.

She used Facebook to send a message to residents.

“Mansfield has a proud history of offering public pools. It was one of the first things I learned when I moved here years ago. Those that have grown up here have many fond memories of these times,” Perry wrote.

“I am very much FOR having a public pool in Mansfield. Likely at this stage it would be one instead of several so that we can ensure that it is able to be properly maintained,” the mayor wrote.

Perry wrote that she asked her public works department on her second day in office what it would take to re-open the Liberty Park pool.

At the time of the closure, Mark Abrams, the city’s parks superintendent, said there was a problem inside a “water line that’s probably been buried for 85 years” that led to problems with the retaining wall inside the pool pump house.

The city had been forced to close the pool early in 2019 and 2020 due to maintenance problems.

City voters in May of 2022 rejected a proposed 1/4-percent income tax increase proposal. Revenue from that measure would have been designated solely for capital improvements for the parks and recreation department.

If it had been approved, the four-year tax would have generated a total of $15 to $16 million, enough to build the new aquatics center and begin to fund other improvements found in the city’s “master plan” for city parks.

(Below is a PDF file with the City of Mansfield’s “Master Plan” for parks approved in 2020 by City Council.)

Despite the defeat at the ballot box in the primary, the city, using grant money from the Richland County Foundation, opened two concrete splash pads in North Lake Park and Johns Park in 2022.

Perry wrote that reopening the pool after years of closure would require the city to have it licensed again by the Ohio Health Department.

“That means this 50-plus-year-old pool would have to come up to what current building code for a pool would be. That would require an extraordinarily significant amount of work and money. Further, it was also impossible to have achieved before this summer season,” Perry wrote.

“Given the timing and the cost, I felt that it was more prudent to invest in a new, modern, accessible facility that would be able to serve our community needs for many decades to come,” the mayor wrote.

How that new pool is funded, designed and even located is yet to be decided, Perry wrote.

“We want your feedback on what you would like to see and where you would like to see a pool be located. But this is a project that will take at least 2 – 3 + years. We need to plan and then raise money to do this.

“It is 100-percent possible, and this administration wants to make it happen. We are also discussing the idea of a nicer splash pad that could also be done on a faster timeline (this would be in addition to a pool),” Perry wrote.

“I hear your concerns and interest in wanting more recreational opportunities for our youth, and I also share that interest.

“It will take us some time to build to where we need to be, but we are committed to doing as much as we can,” the mayor wrote.