Mayor Kleis Explains Why St. Cloud’s Wading Pools are Closed This Year

(KNSI) – The city of St. Cloud is not opening its wading pools this summer.

Mayor Dave Kleis spoke with KNSI’s Bob Hughes and said in normal years, the city would outline its budget for the pools in December.

“We could have maybe turned those things around, but we’d have to know in January or February,” Kleis said.

In normal years, the city starts hiring lifeguards in March.

“There’s training; they have to go through CPR,” Kleis said. “Not only that, if we’re going to open them, we have to prepare the pools. We do some maintenance.”

But, with the state’s COVID-19 restrictions at play earlier this year, Kleis said that made it hard for the city to plan ahead.

“When the governor lifted the restrictions, or when we knew he’s lifting the restrictions, I asked our folks. They said by the time we got everything in place, it would be late July, early August, and we’d only have weeks of it to be open. That would be a huge waste of resources.”

Kleis also cited the current difficulty in hiring part-time and seasonal employees as another issue.

Though the wading pools are closed, the city’s splash pads are open. With the knowledge that there won’t be COVID-19 capacity limits and other restrictions next summer, Kleis said the wading pools will reopen in 2022.

“We still have an aquatic center with the Y; people can use that,” Kleis said. “There’s still outdoor lakes and quarries.”

Splash pads are open in Eastman Park, Riverside Park and Westwood Park.

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