Mill Hall pool is a community asset, and it needs your help
People can be short-sighted creatures, for sure. It can be very difficult to process that in just a few brief months, we will once again be outdoors in shorts — can you imagine it, looking outside? — with birdsong in the air and pollen in our noses.
It is a high winter tradition for many gardeners to select and order their seeds in the coldest time of the year, to help feel connected to those warmer, happier months when things grow.
Likewise, even though the ground is snow-covered and swimming is the furthest thing from most of our minds, now is the time to prepare.
We write, of course, of the Mill Hall Pool.
The pool is in desperate need of financial help — to the tune of nearly $650,000 — to match a DCNR grant which will make up most of the rest of the cost of renovations.
Right now, it can be hard to process the value of that. But if you wait to do so until temperatures are suitable for summer activities like swimming, that will delay the renovations even further.
It’s a common critique of the area that there aren’t enough things for people to do. While we think the truth of this is somewhat flexible, we do acknowledge the decline of viable, public third spaces where people can gather and make memories without substantial buy-ins.
In our centerpiece story about the pool in Thursday’s paper, Mill Hall Mayor Tom Bossert was quoted as saying, “The social development that has occurred here you can’t measure. We are so proud that kids have an opportunity to grow in this kind of environment where they can learn how to function within a safe setting.”
There are vanishingly few of these types of environments left in the area, and that makes those that remain even more valuable.
While the price tag can be a hard pill to swallow for a rural area such as ours, the quality of life places such as the Mill Hall Pool bring to our community is critically important.
The pool has one more year –this year — to match the DCNR grant, before it becomes unavailable and the state money offered there will be lost, effectively doubling the cost of the repairs.
That increased cost may well prove to be nonviable for our community to manage, thus, it is imperative that this goal be met, and met soon.
Businesses can receive up to 95% in tax credits on their contributions to a community project such as the pool, under the Neighborhood Assistance Program.
Times are tough, and warning signs on the economic horizon suggest they will get tougher, so we understand if your contribution is limited — or if you can’t contribute at all.
But we wanted to highlight a clear community good in need, in the hopes that even a few of you might loosen your purse-strings a little in an attempt to come together for the kids — and adults — of Clinton County.
We can’t manage changes of this scale alone, but neighbors helping neighbors can move the scale.