Tecumseh school board votes to tear down pool, seeks input on new facility

Tecumseh school board votes to tear down pool.

By DAVID PANIAN

davidp@tecumsehherald.com

TECUMSEH — With an option to try to repair the Tecumseh Community Memorial Pool building deemed too risky and expensive and an option to pursue building a new pool right away deemed too hasty, the Tecumseh Board of Education on Monday took what appeared to be the only practical option it had left: demolition.

On a 6-1 vote, the board opted to tear down the pool and close up the opening that would remain in the middle school.

The pool has been closed and deemed a safety hazard due to its corroded steel skeleton. In December, the board was presented with three options to address the situation: essentially rebuild the structure at a cost of about $15 million, demolish the pool building for an estimated $2.3 million, and tear it down and build a new pool at a cost of about $28 million. The estimated prices were developed by the district’s engineering consultants, said director of operations Josh Mattison.

“We know this is a difficult decision, but it represents the most responsible and prudent path, as you’ll see,” Mattison said before detailing the timeline for demolition. “It eliminates the safety risks that we have right now with a structurally unsound building, it facilitates a thoughtful community engagement, … and it avoids any hasty financial commitments without a full consideration of all the viable options.”

The demolition work could begin this summer or fall with the reconstruction of the north wall of the school and site cleanup completed in 12 to 18 months, Mattison said.

The reconstruction option was not favorable because of its costs, Mattison said, which were less certain because the engineers can’t tell what they might find under the building. Trustee Heather McGee said the cost likely would be more because at almost 40 years old it would be time to refurbish the pool with new tile and other materials, anyway.

Board members expressed that they really didn’t have much of a choice. The district does not have the funds to pay for the reconstruction option, even with the sinking fund, and the state will not let the district issue bonds for a repair project, even if voters were inclined to approve issuing bonds. The board also wanted to get community input before deciding whether to pursue a new facility.

“I said at a previous meeting where we’re kind of running out of runway, and I think we’re at the end of the runway,” trustee Jacob Martinez said. “We have to do something, and as a district what we’re financially in a position to do is to address the unsafe building. In terms of moving forward, that remains a question for the community to answer.”

McGee was the only “no” vote. She had asked that the decision be split into two parts so that it wouldn’t commit the board to spending more than the estimated $2.3 million, if bids came in more than that estimate.

“For me, approving an intent to demolish and approving the demolition are two separate things,” she said.

Mattison and board vice president Lynne Davis said voting to tear down the pool would not commit the board to spending any money, and that the board would vote on those bids when Mattison presents them to the board.

“The board will see those prices again before we actually approve anything like that,” Mattison said. “The board will have the final approval on moving forward with those bids. This is just giving us approval to go ahead with the design, to put this committee together to get the approvals from the state, from Bureau of Construction Codes and from Bureau of Fire Services to move forward with putting those (requests for proposals) out. We can’t put RFPs out and get pricing from any contractors without all of that completed first.”

“We are voting for full demolition and reconstruction of the wall and the site, cleanup of the site and formation of the committee,” Davis said.

Other board members expressed reservations about the decision, since it would use the sinking fund in a different way than what was presented to the community during the election campaign. Repairing the pool building was given as the top priority for the sinking fund.

“I haven’t heard any input from the community that they are in acceptance of the pool being torn down by using the sinking fund, because that’s not what we asked for,” board member Darin Miller said. “And I know circumstances change, but I do think we were kind enough to go out and ask, and they were kind enough to offer it to us to fix the pool. And now circumstances change.”

Becky Brooks, who was elected board president at the beginning of the meeting in the board’s annual election of officers, said she was glad they found out about the building’s overall condition before putting $2 million into the roof. She acknowledged that tearing down the building went against the spirit of what the district asked voters to approve when voting on the sinking fund.

“Obviously, that was not the intent,” she said. “I also firmly believe that if we had put the money into the pool only to find out that it was going to come falling down on us anyway, that that would have been a serious misstep.”

Miller suggested that the board put together a committee to get input from the community.

Davis said they could wait maybe one meeting, but based off the project timeline Mattison presented and the information from the district’s insurance company, waiting much longer would require fencing off the pool building and limiting access to that end of the middle school, which could affect school operations, including access to the driveways and parking lots for parents to drop off and pick up their children.

“It is unfortunate that we are not using it for what we said we were,” Davis said. “And I think as a board, eventually we have to review how much we collect, because also, in a sinking fund, we don’t have to collect the whole and maybe we have to go back out to the community if we do need to keep collecting, to say, ‘Here’s why we’re collecting it. This is a change from our initial idea.’

“I actually think we should be doing that anyway. We should be communicating regularly to the community how we’re spending that.”

Mattison has said the district will have information on its website about projects paid for through the sinking fund when those begin.

The pool building was first closed in September 2023 after initial inspections to place pool ventilation equipment on the roof identified corroded areas on the roof’s steel. After taking a closer look, engineers said in December 2023 that the pool could be reopened but the corrosion would need to be addressed in the next one to two years.

District voters approved a millage for a sinking fund in November 2024 after district officials promoted it with repairs to the pool building being the top priority project.

The district closed the pool again in April 2025 after the facility’s heating, ventilation and cooling system failed and it could not be repaired due to its age. It has been closed since then as engineers hired to begin the repair work took closer looks at more of the building’s structural steel and found more extensive corrosion.

A contributing factor to the corrosion is thought to be that equipment that was originally installed to remove chlorine and water vapor from the air in the pool did not have the capacity to adequately handle a building of the pool’s size. That allowed those corrosive elements to build up inside the brick walls and within the pool’s drop ceiling and cause the steel to rust and deteriorate.