Oakville is about to build another Horrible Stainless Steel swimming pool at the North Park Community Centre – identical to the Trafalgar Community Centre Pool. The purpose of this petition is to stop the construction of the new pool and have the Town choose a better one. We need to reopen the bidding procedures for this pool and to change the specs to improve safety and swimming performance.

The stainless-steel pool at the Trafalgar Community Centre on Reynolds looks great but is horrible for swimmers. It has a very slippery, unsafe steel wall design. I was an elite international competitor and the pool at 325 Reynolds is the worst pool I have ever experienced.

The stainless-steel pool walls are extremely slick and are dangerous for swimmers when they push off. Unless your plant your feet right on the “t”, pushing off can cause a sudden sideways slip and easily sprain your ankles. Length swimming there is very challenging. The pool also reflects a lot more waves than normal because the walls are too high, causing swimmers faces to get swamped when taking a breath. There have been numerous instances of cuts on sharp edges particularly on feet. Also keeping algae down and overall maintenance of the pool is much more difficult because of a low standard ‘Vacuum Sand’ filtration system. There are much better pools available on the market at similar costs.

It is obvious that no one with a serious swimming background was consulted for input during the selection process. Unfortunately, as with the Oakville Trafalgar pool, the specifications for the new North Park Pool were written to favour only one vendor (Natare) and disqualify all other vendors. For example;

• Use of a Vacuum Sand Filter was mandatory (proprietary to Natare). There are many better systems available and ONLY Natare uses Vacuum Sand.
• Oversized gutters to hold the surge is a very poor requirement for pools with lots of activity, including sport training. Again, primarily only used by Natare.
• All bidders (other than Natare) were offshore and had 25 points arbitrarily deducted out of 100, essentially excluding all manufacturers except Natare.
• Exposed Naked Walls should have been heat welded white PVC panels with a smooth but firm grip – without this the walls are very slick like the Reynolds pool.

Since only Natare could meet the above (vacuum sand and slick stainless steel) requirements it effectively eliminated all other vendors. It is obvious the specifications were written so that only Natare could win the bid, however their pools are of an inferior design. PLEASE try the Reynolds pool and see for yourself. We don’t want another pool like it!

Please help prevent another Reynolds pool mistake and demand that the municipality stop the pool installation immediately and conduct a fair and proper selection process for the North Park Pool. If this pool goes in we will be stuck with it for decades!