The Wagner City Pool has been a topic of interest to many community members for several years. Even though the City of Wagner and the Pool Fundraising Committee both met their goals in garnering $1,000,000 each, thanks to inflation in response to covid, the amount of a new pool has almost tripled, now costing between $5,000,000 and $8,000,000. The need for this community conversation arose in order to get the City of Wagner, Pool Fundraising Committee and Wagner community members all on the same page and to discuss how to move forward with the city pool.

Facilitators for the conversation were Margaret Doom of Wagner Area Growth and Nick Dion, Wagner business owner. There were 24 participants at the conversation representing different groups including Wagner business owners, Wagner City Council, city administration, Wagner Community School, Pool Fundraising Committee and the Wagner Post. Ericka Kotab began by giving some history of the Wagner pool. The pool was built in 1957, making it 78 years old. In the 1990s the pool was relined and a new pool filtration system was constructed. In 2017 the topic of the need for a new pool arose and in 2018 the Pool Fundraising Committee was created and began their fundraising efforts. The Pool Fundraising Committee’s priority was and still is to build a new pool and, in the process, build community.

The conversation began with three basic questions: What could happen? (the gains if a new pool was built); What are the options available? (what can be done with the pool whether build new or renovate existing); and What are some questions that people still have? Potential gains from a new pool include revenue, water features, bringing people to town, family events, more healthy activities, hosting swim meets, etc. Options that were discussed included renovating the existing pool, building a new pool or building a community aquatic center similar to Yankton’s Summit Center. Questions that participants still had were: How does the city and school split the costs of the Center? Can it be built in stages? What were our attendance averages for the current pool for the past several years?

There were potential pool plans with different price ranges and several that were similar to nearby pools such as Platte and Winner available to give the participants an idea of budgets and what could be done. The final part of the community conversation focused on the narrowing down of what the next steps should be for the city pool. Everyone was split into groups to have a discussion on what should be the next steps. The majority consensus was to take a $1,000,000 to revamp and renovate the existing pool and save the other million dollars, potentially adding other pool features in stages later. It was decided that because members of the Pool Fundraising Committee had put so much time, effort and heart into the project that they would meet first to discuss how to move forward. After they held their discussion, the committee would then come back to the city council by the end of March to propose a plan on how to move the pool project forward.