The City of Rossland will manage operations of the Warfield pool for the 2025 season.
The collaboration between the two municipalities will ensure the continued availability of aquatic programs and recreational opportunities for residents while enhancing scheduling, programming, and overall coordination.
Key conditions of the agreement include expanded pool access, with residents from both municipalities benefiting from an improved operating schedule, ensuring better access to swim times, lessons, and recreational programming.
The agreement also allows for greater alignment of aquatic programs with regional recreational needs, including swim lessons, aquatic fitness classes, and special events.
Both municipalities have committed financial contributions to support the facility’s operations and will make efforts to enhance service delivery, including staffing coordination and facility maintenance, to maximize efficiency and user experience.
Rossland Mayor Andy Morel says the agreement ensures residents have access to a pool seven days a week.
“What happened previously is that there were certain days when both community pools were closed because staff needed time off, and that was difficult to coordinate with a single pool. The other advantage is for cleaning and maintenance. It is important that the pools are maintained, obviously, as public facilities, so we’ll again be able to provide continuous service while maintenance is underway.”
He adds that with council’s decision to not invest further in the 92-year-old Rossland Pool, this agreement ensures that if something major happens, residents will still have access to an aquatic facility.
“We’ll continue to put maintenance dollars into it and small amounts of capital to keep it operational, but if anything major happens, we’re not willing to make that investment. So this provides us with the opportunity to have another facility available in case we experience a catastrophic failure that prevents us from operating our own pool.”
Full details, including updated schedules and program offerings, will be available on both the Village of Warfield and City of Rossland websites and social media channels in the coming weeks.
The agreement is only in place for the 2025 season; however, Morel says there is potential for an extension, depending on this year’s results.
“The intent is to use 2025 to see how everything coordinates and works. It puts extra stress on our senior staff to pull this together, but we see many advantages—Warfield does too—with the ability to coordinate, especially at the staffing level, to offer our citizens access to both pools at the same price.”
Be the first to know! Don’t miss out on breaking news and daily updates in your area. Sign up to MyKootenayNow News Alerts.
