The mayor & the new city council need to release all financial data on the new pool & the defunded wading pools ***

There is not a useable picture of the new pool for this article .

What Did the Macon Pool Really Cost — And What Happened to the Wading Pools?

The City of Macon, Missouri completed construction of its new municipal swimming pool in 2024 at a cost of roughly $4.8 million. The facility—located at 903 W. Bourke Street—features a zero-depth entry, slides, and a splash pad, replacing the city’s older neighborhood wading pools as the primary public water recreation option.

The 2025 season marked the pool’s first full summer of operation. While the facility was open and widely used, a central question remains:

What did it actually cost to operate—and what happened to the money previously spent on the wading pools?

The New Pool: First Full Season (2025)

The pool operated on a consistent weekly schedule:

• Tuesday–Saturday: 12–7 PM (including lap swim hour)

• Sunday: 1–5 PM

• Monday: Closed

Based on this schedule and a typical mid-May through mid-August season, the pool was open approximately:

👉 75–80 total days in 2025

The City has confirmed the pool is now closed for the 2025 season, indicating a complete operational cycle without any publicly noted interruptions.

💰 2025 Operating Costs: What We Know (and Don’t)

Despite the scale of the investment, the City has not released a full operating cost breakdown for the 2025 season.

✔️ Confirmed

• Pool operations were funded using Capital Improvement Sales Tax revenue

• At least $30,000 in administrative cost share is documented for FY2025

❗ Not Publicly Disclosed

There are no published figures for:

• Lifeguard and staff wages

• Utilities (water, electric, sewer)

• Chemicals and water treatment

• Maintenance and repairs

• Insurance

These are the core expenses of any aquatic facility—and they are absent from public-facing documents !!!

🧾 Where the Costs Are Hidden

Rather than being presented as a standalone budget, pool-related expenses appear to be distributed across:

• Parks & Recreation payroll

• General maintenance accounts

• Municipal utility operations (internal transfers)

• City-wide insurance

• Capital Improvement Fund expenditures

This structure makes it effectively impossible to identify a single “total operating cost” without accessing internal records.

🏗️ A Key Financial Detail

The City’s decision to fund operations using a capital improvement fund—instead of a dedicated operating budget—has a major consequence:

It obscures the true annual cost of running the facility.

This approach blends long-term infrastructure funding with short-term operating expenses, reducing transparency and making year-to-year comparisons difficult.

🏊‍♀️ What Happened to the Wading Pools?

Prior to the new pool, Macon operated multiple neighborhood wading pools.

2024 Season (Final Year of Operation)

• The wading pools were still in operation during summer 2024

• They were fully funded and maintained for that season

💰 2024 Wading Pool Costs

👉 As with the new pool, no itemized public cost breakdown exists

However, the same categories of expenses applied:

• Water usage

• Chemical treatment

• Maintenance

• Labor (setup, cleaning, supervision if any)

These costs were likely:

• Embedded within parks maintenance budgets

• Not tracked as standalone facilities

• 
  

🔄 Transition to the New Pool

By 2025:

• The wading pools were shut down (“defunded”)

• The new municipal pool’s splash pad became the replacement feature

• Some splash pad hours were offered free to the public

This represents a shift from:

• Distributed neighborhood access

  ➡️ to

• Centralized recreation at a single facility

  
  

⚖️ The Bigger Picture

What We Can Say with Certainty

• ~$4.8 million spent to build the new pool

• Full 2025 season completed (~75–80 days)

• At least $30,000 in administrative costs identified

• Wading pools operated in 2024, then discontinued

  
  

What Remains Unknown

• Total cost to operate the pool in 2025

• Total cost of running wading pools in 2024

• Whether the new system is more or less expensive overall

  
  

Why This Matters

Without clear numbers, residents cannot evaluate:

• Whether the new pool is financially sustainable

• If taxpayer money is being used efficiently

• How costs compare to the previous system

Right now, the financial picture is not transparent—it is fragmented across multiple accounts and funds.

How to Get the Full Answer

A targeted Missouri Sunshine Law request would need to ask for:

“All expenditures related to operation of the municipal swimming pool for FY2025, including payroll, utilities, chemicals, maintenance, insurance, and interfund transfers.”

And separately:

“All expenditures related to operation of municipal wading pools for FY2024.”

Bottom Line

The City built a new, modern aquatic facility and completed its first full season of operation.

But the most basic question still hasn’t been clearly answered:

What does it cost to run—and how does that compare to what we replaced?

Until those numbers are made public, the true financial impact remains an open question.

We have elected a new mayor that actually ran for office. We have a newly elected city council. It is now their collective responsibility to disclose all past & present information concerning the litany of missing information regarding the governing of our city. We all pay our taxes. This entitles us to know how every dime of our hard earned money is being spent. City council minutes for the last quarter of 2025 have been quietly released on the city website. However, the dates that the minutes were finally published have been omitted from the minutes. None of this is acceptable. This type of nonsense will not be tolerated from this day forward. One of the leading "Sunshine Law" attorneys in the nation has contacted us regarding the messed up record keeping and the lack of transparency by our city record keeping. There are questions if state or federal laws have been violated & investigations by the proper authorities are under way.