Just an observation on Lisa Tolentino’s comments in the Times story “Continued criticism on arena public input process” Nov. 3. A pool construction has been bounced around since the mid 1970s and possibly before so it is not a new idea. Ms Tolentino is asking the council to widen their public input access. She also mentions arena vs. community centre either way most of us know what it is and what events are held in various parts of this building. I feel as many others do that a pool has far too many costs to build and maintain afterwards. (We can’t afford to repair our arena.) I would like to also mention that not every resident in Minden Hills township pay taxes so the taxpayer will pay first and users pay after even the taxpayer will have to pay a user fee and still I don’t feel we have sufficient users or for that matter tax paying residents in Minden Hills to manage an expense such as this project would cost to build and maintain. It sure serves our purpose right now and we can barely afford to keep it going and maintained with no added features.

My personal feeling and some others is to have the future would-be users invest in a private facility that already has an indoor pool but if a pool is the only life saver for our county call one of the 400-plus lakes Pool Lake. If the last resort is a pool for sure maybe the board of education would consider a pool at the high school and then the whole county could share the cost which would make more sense than Minden Hills suffering the burden by themselves. Great ideas but we require a good financial backer. There are other concerns and costs but thanks for the opportunity to add my two cents’ worth.

Dick Schell