Letter to the Editor

YMCA continues to raise funds for pool

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Dear editor:

We would like to bring your readers up to date on some exciting events at the Osage Prairie YMCA.

The YMCA Swimming Pool Project is progressing. With great help from the community swimming pool committee, we now have $1,650,000 pledged or given toward the construction of an indoor swimming pool here. The fund-raising effort will be completed on March 31, 2008. At that time, the funds available will determine the size of the pool to be built at the YMCA. It will require $1,850,000 to build a pool that includes a three-lane, 25-yard lap section. We will need approximately $2,040,000 in order to expand the lap pool to four lanes of 25 yard (competitive) length. It would require approximately $2,420,000 to build a six-lane, 25-yard lap section, in addition to the planned leisure/aerobics section of the pool, which will be included in any of these three formats.

We believe that an indoor pool with any of these three configurations would serve our community and YMCA members effectively for many years to come.

However, the larger the pool, the more uses it can accommodate. The size of the pool, and particularly the number of lap lanes (three, four, or six) will be determined entirely by the funds available to us when the fund raising deadline is reached on March 31, 2008.

We would thus urge everyone who can help with gifts and pledges (up to three years) to come forward now. Great generosity has been displayed already by many families, businesses, and foundations -- but we need more help in order to build the best pool possible for our community!

When the project is complete, we will need full utilization of all YMCA facilities. It will cost about $200,000 per year to maintain the pool. We urge everyone to become individual or family members of our YMCA!

We believe that the next few years will provide many opportunities for the Osage Prairie YMCA to grow in memberships, expand services, and become an increasingly important part of our community.

We invite everyone to participate with YMCA membership, donations, and enthusiastic support!

Mike McCaffree

Osage Prairie YMCA

president