A sign of the waning days of summer
Souderton Community pool reduces hours for final weeks of season.
SOUDERTON » It happens every summer at Souderton Community Pool, Borough Manager Mike Coll said at Souderton Borough Council’s Aug. 13 work session meeting.
“We always run into manpower problems the last two to three weeks of the season,” Coll said.
“Most of our lifeguard staff are college-age kids that are returning to college, and then we are relying on our high school students to get us through the rest of the season,” he said.
A number of the high schoolers, however, are also in sports or the band, so they, too, become more limited in availability the final weeks of the summer, he said.
Others may go on vacation, he said.
“It makes it very difficult for us to properly staff the pool facility,” Coll said.
From Aug. 18 through 27, the pool will be open from noon to 6 p.m. instead of its current 8 p.m. closing time, he said. On Aug. 28, which is the first day of school, the schedule will change to 4 to 6 p.m., then on the Labor Day weekend of Friday, Aug. 31, through Monday, Sept. 3, the pool will return to the noon to 6 p.m. hours, he said. Labor Day is the last day this year the pool will be open.
The change has been posted at the pool and online, Coll said.
“I think, lesson learned, next season we’re going to have to establish those hours right at the very beginning,” he said. “We’ve always tried to limp through the season and tried to maintain that pool time as much as possible. It’s becoming more and more difficult to do that.”
In the final few weeks, there are often only a few swimmers in the pool in the later evening hours, in which case the pool may have shut down early anyway, he said.
Council President Brian Goshow said, although the hours in which the Perkasie and Hatfield pools are open in the final weeks of the summer are different from Souderton’s scheduled hours, both those pools also will have reduced hours.
In other matters at the Aug. 13 meeting:
• Coll said the borough has a signed lease for a tenant to move into the wait building at the former train station.
“It is going to be a nail salon,” he said.
He said he doesn’t know when the nail salon will open but expects it to be soon.
The new Northbound restaurant, a partnership between the owners of the Butcher & Barkeep in Harleysville and Boardroom Spirits in Lansdale, is set to open soon in the train station building.
• About 30 more Hometown Heroes banners were recently installed, bringing the total to more than 100, Coll said.
The banners honor active duty or veterans of the United States military.
Information on having a banner dedicated is available on the borough’s website.
Goshow said he was surprised at how many of the veterans photos he recognized. In one case, he went to school with the veteran’s grandson, he said.
“They look exactly alike,” Goshow said.
• Bid opening for a new trash and recyclables collection contract will be scheduled for Sept. 24, so council can make a decision at its Oct. 1 meeting, Coll said.
“We would open them on the 24th, tabulate them and then have a week to review them,” he said.
In 2016, the borough switched to a single-hauler contract. The current hauler is J. P. Mascaro & Sons, which was the winning bidder with a $1.7 million pricetag for the threeyear contract.
Souderton has about 1,800 trash and recyclables accounts, Coll said. Most of those use totes, but there are about 100 on the bag system, he said.
One of the changes being made for the new contract is to limit the number of trash bags those with the bag system can put out to one a week, he said. The current limit is four bags per week.