Water park’s numbers were cut in half

Final numbers from the 2020 Portland Water Park season are in.

Water park manager Missy Bader told Portland Park Board at its meeting Tuesday that attendance and revenue in 2020 were less than half of what it was than the past two years, appropriately so since pool season and capacity were cut in half by coronavirus restrictions.

Total attendance rounded to 10,275 and income was figured at $58,866, Bader said, compared to an average attendance of 24,000 and revenue of $134,000 in the 2019 and 2018 pool seasons. It marks the second straight year the pool has failed to make a profit.

City clerk-treasurer Lori Phillips said the pool had a $38,533 net loss in 2020 and a $5,808 net loss in 2019. The expenses this year will increase because the street and parks department has not finished winterization of the pool, Phillips said.

Rather than its usual opening on Memorial Day weekend, the water park opened on July 4 weekend, around the time Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb began easing coronavirus-related restrictions on such facilities.

It was, however, open for some weekdays in August after Jay Schools delayed the start of school until after Labor Day. Normally the water park is only open on weekends after school starts in early August.

Capacity was also limited to 50% and the facility was shut down for an hour every day for cleaning. Bader said it was important to have the pool open this year to provide some “normalcy” to the community in a year that has been anything but normal.

Bader and board members also expressed confusion as to why lifeguards did not receive a pay increase after the board voted to increase the starting wage from $8 to $9 per hour in March.

“I know we lost money and it’s hard to sit here and ask for a raise, but if we want to keep this pool that’s only 5 years old running, we have to have employees, too,” Bader said, adding the water park is losing employees to McDonald’s and Walmart.

Board secretary Chris Compton said that raise was supposed to have been forwarded to Portland Mayor John Boggs’ office for enactment.

Board president Shauna Runkle said she was upset Boggs never contacted her prior to the budget process beginning.

Phillips said it’s still possible to include raises for lifeguards in next year’s budget, which has yet to be finalized.

In other business, board members Giles Laux, Brian Ison, Glen Bryant, Compton and Runkle:

•Approved claims totaling $11,140 to install a guard rail on the east side of Haynes Park and to fill cracks and coat basketball courts at the park and near the city’s park department office. Guard rails will eventually be installed at each end of Haynes Park because the existing fence has proven to be insufficient, Portland Street and Parks Department’s Matt Shauver said.

•Heard from Shauver that six out of 10 grills in the parks have been salvaged. The grills the department could save are being coated and reinstalled deeper into the ground at the parks, he said.

•Received an update from Portland’s Brett Resler that temporary disc golf baskets had been installed in Hudson Family and Weiler-Wilson parks with permanent ones to go there by the end of the year, he said. The course comes at little-to-no cost to the city because Resler raised around $18,000 from local businesses and donations to build the course.

•Learned that work had been completed on the roof of the amphitheater at Hudson Family Park by Goodhew’s Roofing and Metals. “As (John Goodhew) said, it’s unique and one a kind, and that’s true,”