The Village of Cache Creek is trying to find a way to keep its 50-year-old community pool afloat.

CAO Martin Dalsin says staff are planning to bring a report to council next month on the financial state of the village, and hope to start meeting with the public in October.

“The cost just to operate the pool, without doing any capital improvements, is in the neighbourhood of a little over $100,000 dollars a year. In a really good year, when we charge revenues we bring in less than $10,000 dollars a year. It doesn’t take too much mathematics to figure out that is a huge amount of money for a facility that is open about 3 months of the year,” Dalsin says.

“It’s one thing to spend $100,000 dollars to keep the pool operating, but when it’s that old there are capital improvements and repairs that need to be made, over and above the normal operating costs. And at this point, most of the plumbing is underground. And we have no idea what the condition of that plumbing is.”

Dalsin says some options could be searching for grant funding to use on the pool, raising taxes or hiring a consultant to evaluate the condition of the pool, among other options.

He was asked if the village might replace the pool with a similar facility that might make more sense financially.

“That’s one of the conversations we want to have with the public, coming this fall. I want to present council with what our financial situation is, then council will take that to the public and we’ll start bouncing ideas off people. One of the ideas that has come up in these conversations is the option of a water park, rather than a swimming pool.”

Since the start of 2015, village staff say the net loss to run the outdoor pool has been more than $498,000. This year alone, up to Aug. 15, the village says the pool has cost $75,748.92 to operate and has only made $3,553.61 in revenue.