After 5 years, Paso Robles High School moved big step closer to getting a pool
The long-awaited aquatics complex at Paso Robles High School received support from the school district’s board of trustees during a meeting on Tuesday.
The board of trustees voted 5-2 on Tuesday to approve a $15.9 million bid from Harris Construction to construct the school’s new pool and associated locker rooms. The district will use part of the remaining $31.9 million in Measure M bond funds to finance the construction.
The bid was more than $4 million over budget, but trustees agreed with audience members that the pool needed to be built.
The pool’s annual operational costs will be about $372,000, according to the district.
Kelly Bellew, a teacher in the district and director of sport for the high school swim team, said it was vital to have the new pool as soon as possible.
“We have a pool that is unsafe for our students,” she said. “We need to have an excellent facility, or even an adequate facility for our students.”
Agreeing with Bellew was Jamie Smith, a parent of an incoming swimmer and water polo player at Paso Robles High School.
“I was looking at today at the upcoming swim schedule and they listed all the girls swim meets that are coming up and there’s not one in Paso because we can’t host one,” Smith said. “They’ll never set records at their own high school until we build them this swimming pool.”
Trustees Dorian Baker and Kenny Enney voted against the construction bid for the pool. The costs were too high, they said, and there are other projects that still need to be completed within the district.
“Before we allocate $19 million for the pool, we need to know that our elementary school projects are either complete or safely in the works,” Baker said during the Tuesday meeting, referring to the rough total cost including money that’s already been spent. “I will be happy to vote for the pool once we have hard bids for the construction projects that are needed for our schools, and I move that we would table the vote on the pool until all needed projects are bid out.”
Paso Robles Joint Unified School District’s Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Brad Pawlowski said that the district has already spent a little over $2 million on the pool since it was first put into motion in 2019. That brings total costs for the project to about $19 million should the board approve the $15.9 million construction bid.
Another cost that would use unbudgeted Measure M funds is the renovations needed to transition Daniel E. Lewis Middle School into the dual immersion kindergarten-through-eighth-grade campus and George H. Flamson Middle School into a seventh-through-eighth-grade junior high. The board made the vote to move the dual immersion program during Tuesday’s meeting as well.
That cost could amount to around $9.7 million, according to district projections.
Baker’s motion to table the vote on the construction bid failed, with only Enney’s consent.
Baker and Enney were then the only dissenting votes to approve the $15.9 million pool construction bid.
Tuesday’s vote brings the construction of the pool at the high school a key step closer to completion.
However, the pool will look much different from the plans originally proposed back in 2019.
“The project has been drastically scaled down from its original design,” Pawlowski said during the meeting, noting that the original project included a 25-yard warmup pool and 50-meter competition pool. “That project was really outside of the needs of the district.”
The new pool now includes a 38-meter competition pool and a locker room and workout facility.
According to the Harris Construction bid, the new pool could be completed by no later than the end of 2025.
This story was originally published February 15, 2024 at 10:00 AM.
