Pool Resurfacing Coming Soon Thanks to Grant

Montgomery County Family YMCA Press Release (Red Oak, Iowa) 
YMCA News for Immediate Release

The Montgomery County Family YMCA of Red Oak, Iowa will receive a $40,000 grant award that the YMCA applied for in the fall of 2016 to support the Wilson Aquatics Center Pool Interior Resurfacing project. The YMCA’s Aquatic Center provides the necessary facilities and wide range of programming for our constituency’s needs to be met. Youth and adults are served through programs such as private and group swim lessons, school/scouting water safety educational programs, winter swim team, physical therapy, water fitness classes, scuba diving classes offered not only by the YMCA, but through our current collaborations with the county hospital, community school district, and emergency responders. The YMCA Board of Director’s approved in August 2016 a strategic plan that addresses the priorities of Youth Development, Healthy Living, and Social Responsibilities for our 2500 members. The focus of the plan is to address the high rate of chronic disease and obesity in our community, plus, how we can better serve the needs of an aging population.

Nick Zimmer, Executive Director of the Montgomery County Family YMCA, indicated that the grant award of $40,000 will play a major impact to the nearly $65,000 project which will take place sometime in the spring or summer of 2017 and allow the YMCA to improve and repair the Wilson Aquatic Center. It has been well-maintained for the past 16 years, however the interior surface has exceeded its life expectancy by 4 years. As part of our facility master plan the interior needs to be replaced to avoid the risk of programming downtime and eventual closure to the center. The renovation of the pool will not only allow us to continue offering necessary and quality programs, but will provide expanding collaborative programming opportunities with other community and area agencies that focus on healthy living lifestyle goals as well as concentrate on the high rates of obesity and chronic disease facing our service area. Our swimming pool is ADA accessible, so no one is denied access to use the center. Youth development can be witnessed in not only the swimming activities that the center offers, but through the lifeguard training classes held during the year which develop the social responsibility skills that the YMCA emphasizes.

The grant award will play a major factor in allowing the YMCA to continue to be the number one educational water safety resource center for the southwest Iowa regional counties that we serve. As one of the few indoor aquatic centers in southwest Iowa, we can continue to build on our established water exercise and physical rehabilitation programs through strengthening our collaborative partnership with our county and area hospitals for more population health programming for all ages. Socially, the center truly brings people of all ages together, from infants to older active adults which allows each generation to better understand and respect one another.

Zimmer shared that without the state of Iowa Rural YMCA Facility Improvement grant program the facility enhancements would have taken a lot more time in raising the necessary funding to undergo a project of this financial magnitude and that the entire Montgomery County Family YMCA is deeply appreciative to our Iowa state legislature that is helping to rebuild Iowa’s Infrastructure and the wonderful volunteer and staff leadership with the Iowa Department of cultural Affairs for the administration of the grant. Zimmer also mentioned the fine work that is being done with all the YMCA’s across the state of Iowa through the Iowa YMCA Alliance efforts that the Montgomery County Family YMCA is proudly involved in. The Iowa YMCA Alliance has strived to keep communication open with all our elected officials and have one clear message about the life-changing programs that take place each and every day at YMCAs throughout our great state of Iowa that can be shared with them.

The State of Iowa awarded $500,000 in grant funding to 7 rural Iowa YMCAs’ to support facility maintenance and renovation projects through the Rural YMCA Facility Improvement Grant Program. The program seeks to strengthen rural Iowa communities by investing in facility infrastructure projects to sustain youth development, healthy living, and social responsibility initiatives at YMCAs located in communities with populations of 28,000 or less. Funding for the program is made possible though an appropriation by the Iowa Legislature from the Rebuild Iowa Infrastructure Fund. The fund was established in Iowa code in 1994 and is the primary funding source for the State of Iowa financed public infrastructure-related expenditures. The Rural Iowa YMCA Facility Improvement Grant Program is administered by the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs.

 The YMCA facility committee and YMCA board of directors will be studying all information related to the design and project timeline in January of 2017 to move the project forward.

There will be some down-time where the pool will be closed for the facility enhancement project to be completed in the Wilson Aquatics Center.

For more information on the Wilson Aquatics Center Pool Interior Resurfacing project or how one can become a member, volunteer, donor, or simply involved with the Montgomery County Family YMCA, please stop in for a visit or tour of the YMCA, call the YMCA at 712-623-2161, or visit the YMCA on Facebook, or the Y’s website at www.mcymca.com