Katherine Dourlet and her husband, Charles, have been regular users of the Farmer City swimming pool “for years and years.”
They both go to the adult swim time.
That time was limited this year as a leak caused closure of the pool after only a few weeks of operation.
The Dourlets still get their pool time in, but now have to make the 11-mile drive northwest to LeRoy to do so.
“Unfortunately we have to drive over there,” she said. “They have the Replex. They have the weight room.”
Many people were understandably upset when the Farmer City pool had to close for the season — especially in light of the city having spent more than $1 million for a new liner and other upgrades just a few years ago.
It underscores the aging condition of several area swimming pools. Especially in smaller communities, it’s a struggle to keep the facilities in working order due to limited funds.
Katherine is hoping the pool reopens next season.
“It’s such an asset for a small town to have a nice pool like that,” she said.
Fellow Farmer City resident Jason Hill said he and his wife, children and grandchildren use the pool regularly on weekends when it’s open.
Since the closure they, too, have traveled on occasion to LeRoy.
“We understand why the pool closed,” Hill said. “It’s a good pool. It’s good for the community and the surrounding area.
“I know people from Clinton and Mahomet who come to that pool. The pool is usually packed on the weekend.”
One of those Mahomet residents who had visited the pool periodically is Priscilla Hart, who grew up in Farmer City. She said she and her three children would meet her brother’s wife and their three daughters to go swimming at the pool.
Hart said Farmer City is one of several area pools they visit.
“We were going to make it our regular routine and visit other area pools less,” Hart said. “I grew up going to the Farmer City pool, eating at Dewey’s, stopping at the Casey’s gas station and occasionally grabbing a few items from their grocery store (it was IGA then).”
In Farmer City, season lasted less than one monthAt more than a half-century old, the Farmer City pool is like many in the area. It needs constant attention, and things are going to wear out.
The 52-year-old public facility underwent a $1.3 million overhaul three years ago.
City Manager Sue McLaughlin said that work included a new gutter system, new pool deck, new lining, which is supposed to last longer than paint, a new pump system, elimination of the baby pool and replacement with a zero-entry pool.
Despite the overhaul, the pool experienced a number of confounding problems this year.
McLaughlin said the woes started in April when a contractor came to fix problems on a pool wall from the original overhaul.
Next came several pump issues that had to be resolved.
“Then we had reports of kids cutting their feet on something on the pool floor,” McLaughlin said.
It turns out plaster dollops left by the crew that worked on the wall was causing the injuries.
The pool was drained, and the floor sandblasted and cleaned.
“Before we drained it, we thought we had a leak because we were going through a lot of fresh water and chemicals,” McLaughlin said.
A leak detector was brought in who pinpointed the problem to the wall that had supposedly been fixed earlier in the year. The leak was causing the 176,000-gallon pool to lose three-quarters of an inch of water a day plus chemicals. The loss was becoming cost-prohibitive
As the swim season was at its mid-point and the number of staff and swimmers would have shrunk due to band camps and other activities, city officials decided to close it for the season.
“We thought it was better to address the leaks and get ready for next season,” McLaughlin said.
In total, the pool was open a little more than three weeks this year.
In Gibson City, hope is that new pool opens in 2026 As pools age, the decision has to be made whether to continue to fix problems, shut it down or build a new one. In Gibson City, officials have chosen the latter option while keeping the old one open as long as they can.
Gibson City’s pool — one of the oldest in the area — was built in the 1930s and upgraded in the both the ‘60s and ‘90s.
Voters in March voted to increase the sales tax from 1 percent to 2 percent to pay for building a new one.
The new pool will be located just east of the current one in North Park.
“It’s showing its age,” pool manager Randy Ferguson said.
“We still have metal water lines that are always failing. We have the original fence from the ‘60s” that can’t last much longer.
The pool has been closed on occasion this season, but Mother Nature has been the primary culprit, including a lightning strike that took out a pump.
Ferguson, who has been with the pool for about 25 years, hopes the new one can open its doors in the spring of 2026. He isn’t sure, though, if the current pool will be able to limp through next season.
“I had my pool inspection a couple of days ago, and a lot of things need to be updated to stay open next year. I don’t know if it will be financially prudent. We’re getting prices now,” Ferguson said.
In Paxton, older pool ‘needs a lof of attention’Paxton’s swimming pool dates to the 1960s when voters agreed to a tax to build the facility and in the process created a park district, which operates it.
It has had its bumpy seasons as well, closing for at least one entire season in 2011.
Park board President Denver Piatt said this year the pool opened later than normal due to the resignation of the recreation director close to the time when the pool would have opened.
He called the summer of 2024 so far “a typical season with an aging pool.”
“For the most part we’ve got a good group of people who have stepped up and did what needed to be done” to open the pool, Piatt said.
The approximately 60-year-old pool has been fairly problem-free so far mechanically this year, he said. That doesn’t mean everything is sunshine and roses.
“We have our issues,” Piatt said. “There’s some things we’re going to look at this fall. It’s an older pool, so it needs a lot of attention.”
One possibility, he said, is taking a similar path to Gibson City and placing a referendum on the ballot asking voters to approve a sales tax hike to pay for a new or improved pool.
Many area public pools are long in the tooth, and those in charge of their operation and oversight do the best they can.
Hap Parker Family Aquatic Center in Rantoul is one of the newer municipal pools in the area — opened in 2004 on the grounds of the former Chanute Air Force Base to replace the old pool located at Wabash Park.
With relatively newer equipment, the pool has fewer mechanical issues than some of its older neighbors. Still, the pool had to close one day recently due to a non-mechanical issue, said Recreation Director Humphrey, who declined to indicate what prompted the closure.
It’s not just older pools that have their glitches.
The main pool at Champaign’s Sholem Aquatic Center, which was reopened in 2006 after being rebuilt, was closed for four days earlier this month when a pump failed.
In Tuscola, upgrades have been often and expensiveAt Tuscola, City Administrator Drew Hoel likely speaks for many public officials when addressing swimming pool issues:
“They can be maintenance hassles. We try to get through every year.”
So far, so good this year at the pool that was built in the ‘50s.
Hoel said the pool has undergone about half a million dollars worth of upgrades over the years for work ranging from new lines to pumps and filters to a new concrete pool deck.
So far this year, he said, there have been no mechanical issues.
“We’ve had a pretty decent summer, knock on wood,” Hoel said.
As for area pool use numbers, they have ranged from great to decent, according to officials.
Not every community has a public swimming pool, so to accommodate the need to get wet and cool off, many have gone a less-expensive route by installing splash pads.
Several officials said they believe swimming pools are a viable asset.
Said Farmer City’s McLaughlin, “I think it’s very important to this small community.”
Rantoul’s Humphrey added: “Aquatics, to me, is very, very important to quality of life. I’m a huge proponent of it.”
Dave Hinton is editor of The News-Gazette's Our County section and former editor of the Rantoul Press. He can be reached at dhinton@news-gazette.com.
