By Brandi Watters, Herald Bulletin Staff Writer
ALEXANDRIA — Using thick black markers, Krista Mohler and Stormie Jones scribbled across the face of a shoe box and carefully carved a small slot into the lid.
“Save our pool. Keep us cool,” the message read.
Pleased with their marketing tool, the children set out into their neighborhood and knocked on doors. As the doors of neighborhood homes opened, the girls pushed the box upward, allowing sympathetic adults to deposit change and small, folded bills.
When their work was done, the girls had raised $27 to save the town pool.
They rushed to Beulah Park on Sunday to catch up with a swimsuit parade fundraiser for the pool but arrived late. Swimsuit-clad locals were already returning to their vehicles as the damp weather churned tornado watches and severe thunderstorm warnings.
Joined by another pool-lover, Allee Mohler, the girls found the organizers of the event and proudly handed over a check for $27.
The organizers, Vanessa Hosier, Cheri Brown and Penny Stevens, wailed and shot their hands into the air as the girls showed off the money.
The organizers, or pool ladies, as they are now known, were dressed in swimsuits with terry-cloth covers and beachwear protecting them from the light drizzle falling from the gray sky.
Hosier showed off a white Speedo swim cap adorned with pink silk flowers.
“The pool ladies aren’t going to save the pool,” Brown told the three young girls. The local children who flock to the pool each summer, she said, will eventually save the pool.
The pool ladies began organizing a Save the Summer, save-the-pool effort last month when they learned that city officials would not reopen the pool due to budget shortfalls.
Mayor Jack Woods said the maintenance, repairs and staffing at the pool would cost over $80,000 this summer. Too much, he said, for the city to handle when property tax caps are draining the city budget.
Since then, the city has shown interest in installing a pool liner to help offset the costs of maintenance and will open the pool if residents can pitch in $50,000.
Woods said this will bring the operating cost down to a little over $30,000.
On Sunday, the first official fundraiser to save the pool was held. Over 100 Alexandria residents donned swimsuits, flip-flops and beach towels and participated in a parade from the Alexandria Community Center to the swimming pool at Beulah Park.
At the end of the march, participants tossed donations into a large blue tarp that resembled the pool just outside the pool’s locked gate.
Stevens estimated that $2,500 was raised in the march.
For the past few weeks, students at Alexandria schools have been taking money to school in several fundraising efforts for the pool.
This week, jar wars will gather change for the effort.
Between citizen donations, the march to the pool and student fundraisers, Stevens said the pool fund has around $5,000.
She is confident that corporate donors will help to bring the number closer to the $50,000 goal.
Throughout town, cans soliciting donations for the fund have been placed at business counters.
The money needs to be raised by the end of April to purchase the pool liner and get the pool ready for its Memorial Day opening, but the pool ladies are confident that the money can be raised.
Alexandria resident Warren Brown is proud of his wife’s efforts to save the Alexandria pool, partly because he sees it as a defining characteristic of Alexandria. “If you keep losing those things, you lose your identity. The pool is one of those things that creates an identity for Alexandria.”
Contact Brandi Watters: 640-4847, brandi.watters@heraldbulletin.com
