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The Nicholasville Jessamine County Joint Parks and Recreation Committee has chosen a management company to manage the Riney B Park Aquatic Center Pool.

Attending the meeting were members from both the county and the city government, including Fiscal Court Magistrates Justin Ray and Adam Teater, Nicholasville City Commissioner Patty Teater, and Parks and Recreation Director Duane McCuddy. 

The purpose of the meeting was to choose a management company to handle the maintenance of the aquatic center and all of the staffing that goes into running the pool during the season. 

The four companies that were considered for a contract were Professional Pool Management, USA Management, Pool Management Inc., and Bluegrass Pool Management. Only one of which is a local company, and that is the company the group chose for a one-year management contract. 

This is due to multiple reasons, but mainly because Bluegrass is a local company, and it was the only company to include so-called “hidden costs.” 

The other companies didn’t include costs for restroom maintenance and front-desk supervisory workers for example. According to Teater, the idea of hiring a pool company to manage the pool was so that Nicholasville and Jessamine County wouldn’t have to utilize their own staff for pool maintenance and management. 

The omission of so many necessary line items in the other three company proposals led the group to believe those contracts would come out to be a lot more expensive after adding those elements than the Bluegrass contract, which included all of it and even agreed to start the contract a month earlier than the other three companies. 

Teater said that Bluegrass also included off-season inspections, which is particularly important to the city and county officials who want to extend the longevity of this newly renovated pool.  

“In my opinion the Bluegrass is our best option based on the fact that it’s local. It’s a cleaner proposal. We know what our responsibility is and what their responsibility is. they just seem like they’re going be easy to work with, ” Ray said.

McCuddy added “Bluegrass runs the pool over in Richmond and they have the same filtration system that we do and he’s actually been down to our pool several times.” 

The pool is set to open on Memorial Day weekend on May 27.