Councillors have explained their decision to vote against extending Gunnedah's pool hours after social media backlash from the community.
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The NVI spoke to the four Gunnedah councillors, mayor Jamie Chaffey, deputy mayor Rob Hooke, and councillors Murray O'Keefe and John Campbell, to hear their reasons.
They denied the motion looking to extend the pool's closing time by an hour to 8pm from 7pm, and undertake a study into the pool's patronage from November to June 2021.
The four opposing councillors hadn't spoken about the issue as a group prior to last Wednesday's meeting, but all had similar reasoning for their decision.
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All said financially, opening the pool a month earlier this year and it remaining open a month longer next year gave more benefits than keeping the pool open till 8pm.
Cr Hooke said while many locals were unhappy with the decision, figures from the last pool season showed that it wasn't being used enough in that 7pm to 8pm time slot.
"Figures given to council ... indicated in the quietest month, only two people entered the pool in that last hour, and the busiest was 64 people that went through in the last hour for that month," he said.
"That's not a very large number of people."
I've been telling everyone who mentions to me ... 'I sometimes like to go for a swim at the pool after work' to turn that 'sometimes' into 'regularly' and be making the case through your feet and your actions and it'll be funded to stay open.
- Cr Murray O'Keefe
All four of the councillors mentioned the importance of the extraordinary August meeting, where it was determined to be rid of the longer pool day to make way for an extended pool season.
"There was a determination after that council meeting, which to my knowledge was supported by an overwhelming majority, which then became the motion, and that change saw the extension of the operating timeline of the pool which the community has been asking for a long time," Cr Chaffey said.
"It's of critical importance for councillors to listen to everybody in the community and what I heard clearly from members of the community was it was of critical importance for the use of the facility to be extended ... and it also has to remain affordable for everyone to go to the pool.
"As per the determination in the August meeting, it was considered to drop the opening hours of the pool back by one hour and that was put forward by the organisation based on the level of utilisation of a past season."
But it's not the end of decisions regarding the pool.
Gunnedah Shire Council will review the summer season next winter to see which avenue is the best to take.
Cr O'Keefe said he was "confident" the extended season would drive more use of the pool rather than a shorter season and longer opening hours, but for locals to have both, "people have got to use this asset hard".
"I've been telling everyone who mentions to me 'that would've been nice, I sometimes like to go for a swim at the pool after work' to turn that 'sometimes' into 'regularly' and be making the case through your feet and your actions and it'll be funded to stay open," he said.