No changes made

Emotions ran high at Tuesday’s park board meeting.
But Portland Park Board made no changes to the design of Portland Water Park, despite requests from the Jay County Summer Swim Team.
Members plan to revisit the issue at the board’s next meeting, which has not yet been scheduled.
The board unveiled a design for the new water park — which includes a lap pool that is 42 inches deep in its shallow end and 6 feet deep where the starting blocks are located — at its Nov. 11 meeting.
Since then, representatives of the summer swim team have expressed concerns about the design because it is not deep enough for young swimmers to dive into the shallow end based on USA Swimming standards.
Before Tuesday’s meeting, park board members and representatives from the swim team worked to tweak the design to make the lap pool’s shallow end 48 inches deep, which would allow for diving starts.
That new design would cost an additional $268,000.
Park board member Donald Gillespie told a packed room he met with Rob Weaver and Steve Arnold — who were representing the swim team — Tuesday morning and they endorsed the revamped design. Gillespie also talked to the other park board members (Rod Ashman, Shauna Runkle, Kristi Betts and Holly Tonak), who agreed to make the changes.
But a letter to the editor from Weaver, who also serves as the co-chair of the water park’s fundraising committee, in Tuesday’s edition of The Commercial Review, compromised park board’s willingness to make the changes to the design. The letter, which stated the swim team did not endorse the pool design and it was not a first class facility, was submitted Monday morning before an agreement between park board and the swim team was made.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Weaver apologized for the letter and said those statements would no longer be true with the new design.
“It was written at a time when we felt there was no hope of coming to a compromise with the park board about the depth of the pool and our only hope was to try and gain additional support from the community,” he said. “With the new design the pool would indeed be a first class facility.”
After the design was unveiled in November, park board members received text messages and saw social media posts, including some that encourage people to take back their donations to the pool, Ashman said.
Tuesday’s letter to the editor also inspired calls, text messages and emails to park board members from members of the community who are unhappy the pool design may change to meet the swim team’s requests.
“This letter was not only ill advised, it was not even warranted,” said Gillespie. “I’ve been betrayed, I’ve been hurt …”
He said he wouldn’t make any vote regarding the design of the pool because he was too emotional to do so fairly.
“I’ve got to reevaluate everything, but I will make my vote according to 21,000 people not 125 members of the swim team,” Gillespie said. “It will be based off what’s best for this community, and I don’t know what that is right now.”
Runkle said 42 inches is safe for swimming and noted that some other pools in the area, including those in Fort Recovery and Berne, are just as shallow or more shallow than what the current design calls for.
“We were not designing an unsafe pool,” she said. “HWC would never design an unsafe pool and we would never approve one.”
Ashman said the 42-inch depth was chosen because it allows for the greatest variety of activities and because the board is designing a pool for the entire community to use.
“It’s not worth it to fight with you, and we’re not going to fight with you,” he said. “Here’s the deal, we’re going to give you a pool and you can swim in it or you don’t swim in it.”
Ashman only allowed Weaver to speak Tuesday night, which upset many meeting attendees. Many continued to comment, and some shouted at Ashman.
Weaver then asked that attendees to be respectful of park board members.
Gillespie requested the park board not vote on the proposed changes because emotions would likely get in the way, and board members — except Ashman — agreed. They plan to revisit the issue at their next meeting.
The meeting should have been a celebration, Runkle said, because they reached a compromise that would make everyone happy but park board members now feel defeated.
“We were excited about it until all this crap came out,” she said. “If I hear one more thing, if I see one more thing on Facebook, any of us, we’re done.
“We’ve been beaten and beaten and beaten.”