Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

City Council approval means pool likely to open on time

The Austin City Council on Monday night agreed to the Parks, Recreation and Forestry Department’s request to begin taking bids for repairs on the Austin Municipal Pool.

With the current paint peeling and chipping in places, these repairs will focus on repainting the main pool and the diving well.

Total estimates put the cost at around $123,001. According to Director Jason Sehon, the only outside costs will come from a sandblasting company at around $44,779. All other work, including the painting, will be done in house by city employees.

The approval by the board makes it likely that the pool will still be able open on June 3 as originally planned, though Sehon did say there was a chance that any unforeseen circumstances could push the opening back.

Nevertheless, this path is better than the possibility that the pool wouldn’t have opened at all. During Monday night’s meeting Sehon showed off large chunks of paint, as thick as credit cards, that had fallen off, leaving behind sharp edges that staff felt would be dangerous to swimmers using the pool.

Through conversations with the contractor who last painted the pool in November of 2022, the failure of the paint is linked to two different areas including the fact that old paint wasn’t sandblasted off prior to the 2022 painting and that the paint used wasn’t mixed correctly by the manufacturer and couldn’t adhere to the surface like it should.

In other news

The council approved a bid from The Joseph Company, Inc. for a planned T-Hanger at the Austin Municipal Airport for an estimated $1,87 million.

The bid was slightly over two other bids by Everstrong Construction, Inc. ($1.843 million) and Met-Con Construction, Inc. ($1.859 million), but those two companies didn’t meet the thresholds for the legislatively mandated Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program.

A  DBE firm must meet specific criteria for federal-aid funded projects.

These criteria often apply to socially and economically disadvantaged individuals, owning at least a 51% interest and also controlling management and daily business operations.

In a memo to the board, City Engineer Steven Lang explained that when looking for subcontractors, Joseph Company selected Dulas Excavating as site work contractor, which met required criteria.

The hangar itself will be a 10-unit hangar and will be 42 by 230 feet.