Portland park facilities will open

Portland Water Park will open the first weekend of July.

Its hours, how it will operate and other details have yet to be decided.

Portland Park Board at its meeting Tuesday set a target date for the pool’s opening and gave water park manager Missy Bader until June 19 to draft a plan as to how the pool and its workforce will operate and abide by COVID-19 prevention guidelines.

Portland Mayor John Boggs, who was at the meeting, is requiring each organization that uses park facilities, including recreational league leaders and the Portland Rockets, among others, to submit preliminary operational plans to his office and Jay County Health Department environmentalist and administrator Heath Butz within the next 17 days.

“I don’t want to face a mourning mother. And I know you don’t either,” said Boggs, who was referring to the need for comprehensive measures to prevent the further spread of COVID-19.

Portland’s pool operations will be modeled in part after the City of Berne, which forwarded its plan to reopen its pool while abiding by social distancing and preventive viral infection measures to Portland officials.

Whatever the water park’s operations looks like, street and parks department superintendent Tom Leonhard said he is expecting the city will bring in $30,000 less from the water park than would have been projected to in a normal year.

“That’s more than my entire equipment budget,” Leonhard said. He added that it’s a “service” to open the pool to the public this summer.

In 2019 the city brought in $10,000 less than projected at the water park from lower attendance because of weather but was able to make a profit in 2018, the board reported.

It’ll be a crunch to get the pool open by July 4, Portland Street and Parks Department employee Matt Shauver said, but it’ll get done.

Keeping the restrooms clean, both at the pool and the parks, is a whole other important matter to contain the spread of COVID-19.

Butz said it’s ideal that the pool’s bathroom and high contact points be wiped down every hour, but that is not feasible for the parks department, Shauver and Leonhard said.

Cleaning park bathrooms, which the board voted to also open the first weekend of July, will be enough of a challenge, Shauver said, in addition to cleaning playground equipment on a regular basis.

Playgrounds and park facilities will officially open July 4, but the consensus in the room was that park playground equipment was already being used and there’s nothing the city can do to stop it.

“There’s kids on the playground everyday … everybody knows this,” board member Giles Laux said, adding that he opposed opening park bathrooms before July 4 because he believes it would encourage more use of playground equipment.

Boggs reassured the crowd of 17 that attended the meeting that cleaning supplies will be plentiful if the city can get them.

Currently all preventative equipment and supplies to combat the spread of COVID-19 is reimbursable by the federal government, the mayor said.

To keep the water park as clean as possible, proposed adjustments that were discussed include limiting hours it is open, adjusting the price of admission and the availability of concessions, and limiting pool capacity to at most 50%.

Bader repeated that the public needs to be flexible as the pool staff adjusts to operating a pool in the midst of the pandemic. The board voted to limit the pool’s capacity based on how many lifeguards are available.

Bader said she currently has 15 lifeguards who have committed to working this summer, which is seven less than last year. Her staff will be even smaller once college classes begin, she added, and a viral outbreak among the workers would devastate the pool’s ability to operate.

One definitive order by the board is that personal protective equipment and cleaning supplies have to be on hand every day or the water park will not open.

Butz said its advantage over other facilities comes from the open air that will help dilute the potential spread of the virus.

It is his recommendation that masks be worn when possible by pool attendees but he knows that won’t always be the case. Countywide, he said more residents should be wearing masks when out in public but ultimately it's up to each individual to be responsible.

In other business, park board members Brian Ison, Chris Compton, Shauna Runkle and Laux:

•Voted to allow local baseball diamonds to be open for games starting June 14 (see related story on page 8). Each diamond is required to have its own bathroom during games per state COVID-19 guidelines. Portable toilets will be installed and maintained by leagues/teams at diamonds that do not have restrooms.

•Heard from Shauver that general repairs had been conducted to a light pole and fencing at Hudson Family Park. He also reminded the board that it forgot to vote at its March meeting on whether or not to award a bid for crack seal maintenance on the outer trail to Hudson Family Park. The board rectified this, awarding the contract to J.G. Excavating & Asphalt Paving out of Huntington, which gave the lowest quote of $5,500.

•Learned that 17 trash cans had been purchased for use at Portland parks. The cans, which cost $70 each, are easier for trucks to pick up and have lids. Shauver said he wished the entire city would use the cans because it’s easier for waste management.

•Voted to allow The Rock Church attendees to use Hudson Family Park restrooms on Sunday mornings. The church has been holding weekly services at the park’s amphitheater to promote social distancing.

•Heard that retiree Tom Zimmerman and three college students will be assisting with mulching and lawn trimming at city parks. Mulching has already begun at Hudson Family Park.