The Chadron City Council Monday night put off action on a professional services contract with the consultant picked to design and help sell to voters a joint project with Chadron State College to enclose the city’s outdoor swimming pool as a replacement for CSC’s demolished Armstrong pool.

Council member Paris Fisher says it’s a matter of timing and information…with the council already looking to whether to go ahead with a $4-million dollar upgrade of the city’s storm water drainage system and an extension of the expiring LB-840 economic development sales tax to fund it.

Fisher emphasizes that the council members aren’t opposed to the pool project, they just want to know more about it first and don’t feel they’ll have a chance to do that until the decisions are made on the drainage project and LB-840 vote.

That position frustrates city manager Wayne Anderson because the proposed consultant’s contract with Burbach Aquatics doesn’t ask council members to take any position on the pool idea and has no cost to the city unless the voters were to approve the pool plan in a referendum.

Instead, the contract simply allows Burbach to start preparing the pool proposal that will go to the voters…setting in it what works from an economic standpoint, what it will cost, and what funding mechanism would be used.

Anderson says waiting for the sales tax and storm sewer decisions just pushes back getting the information on the pool completed while perpetuating what he insists is the erroneous idea that the two projects are somehow related.

He says the storm sewer project and enclosing the swimming pool…if the voters were to give their ok…are separate needs that would have separate funding mechanisms.

Fisher says the delay on the pool consultant’s contract will be minimal since the city council is aiming for a vote on renewing the half-cent LB-840 tax in late March or April, but Anderson is worried that even a 2-month delay might prove fatal to the college’s participation.

He doesn’t know when CSC must make a firm decision on going with the joint project using the city pool or move ahead with its own new, but much smaller pool, but says waiting until April or May just to let Burbach start putting the project together means it would be fall at the earliest before a referendum election could be held.

Anderson hopes to set up a meeting between Burbach and the council in the next week or two to ease council fears and get the contract signed so the planning and design work can begin.