It's no surprise that new pool at Valley Falls is proving popular

The new Valley Falls swimming pool is averaging about 120 people a day in attendance, according to a recent report in The Vindicator newspaper there.

Last year’s attendance at the old pool was less than 50 people per day, it was reported.

Concession stand sales at the new pool are topping $100 per day, it was reported, which is three times what they did last year at the old pool.

The only real problem noted at the Valley Falls swimming pool this summer is parking – not enough of it.

Parking near the pool is so tight that lifeguards and other pool staff have been asked to park elsewhere to free up some more parking spaces for pool customers.

The new Valley Falls swimming pool features a nice water slide along with some deck sprays and a mushroom shaped water feature. 

By comparison, the Holton pool had about 60 people in attendance at about 2:30 p.m. on Thursday when the temperature was at 95 degrees.

A new water slide feature has been discussed for the Holton swimming pool – nothing extravagant or overly-expensive – carrying a pricetag of about $24,000 - similar to what the new pool at Valley Falls has.

Holton has a nice, unique, spacious swimming pool located in a beautiful park setting but compared to other community pools in northeast Kansas it has fallen behind the times a little with regards to water features that today’s families look for.

As shown in the photo above from the 1967 files of The Recorder, a slide was added to the Holton pool features that summer and it proved to be very popular.

A fund-raising campaign for the new water slide feature at the Holton pool is under way, and that is great, but it’s unlikely that the $24,000 needed can be raised in a reasonable time span, without a major benefactor or two stepping forward.

While city officials have noted that local tax funds for such a pool improvement are not in this year’s budget, such plans could be incorporated into the next city budget, which is being planned now.

Local taxes collected in Holton and other small towns across the state provide for many needed services in the community. A lot of those services such as street, fire protection, water and sewer, police, electric, etc., are not widely recognized and appreciated like they should be by everyone.

On the other hand, when your town’s leaders earmark some local tax funds to improve your swimming pool, for example, those improvements are highly visible in the summer and therefore more likely to be appreciated by citizens. That’s just how it is. 

A new swimming pool water slide is not ever going to rate very high on importance to city officials compared to all of the other things that the city must provide for the community behind the scenes. Nor should it. 

But when possible to budget, a highly visible city improvement like a new water slide at the pool is still very important to the vitality of the community.

More attendance at the Holton swimming pool in the summer means more people in the town during the summer, which in turn means more potential customers at all of the local businesses. That’s economic development, too.

In other words, a new water slide feature at the pool would be good for business – not just at the pool itself ‑ but all across the town.