Hoke County Pool Sucks Another Cool $2.5 Million from County Budget
Hoke County Commissioners apparently thought filling and maintaining water levels at the James A. Leach Aquatic & Recreation Center—aka, homage to incumbency—was free.
On April 1, 2024, an auditor told the Hoke County Commission that, “…in 2023, the county had to pay over $2.5 million to Fayetteville PWC [Public Works Commission] for apparently using more water from PWC than expected.” That’s the same year the county filled its vainglorious James A. Leach Aquatic & Recreation Center for a May 1 grand opening soirée and maintained its water levels for another seven months.
The bill came as a surprise, according to The News-Journal’s coverage of the meeting. The auditor’s explanation to commissioners was, “….that’s a one-time deal for that unexpected bill. Basically, the county used more than its allotted amount.”
We were unable to find water volume figures for the James A. Leach Aquatic & Recreation Center, or even how often it flushes. There is, however, no doubt it’s massive enough for financial ripples to be felt for decades.
Its headline amenity is an eight-lane, 25-yard competition pool. Depth isn’t published, but assuming its six feet and the lanes are squeegeed into roughly 48 feet, that calculates to 162,000 gallons. Then add the recreation pool—probably another 80,000 gallons, waterslide and slash and spray features. That low-end total comes to around a quarter million gallons weighing more than 2 million pounds. It’s a heavy and expensive load on electric pumps struggling to keep things Tidy Bowl fresh and clean.
The magnitude is tidal, although the commission remains firmly committed to meandering around the subject. Officials raved about the auditor’s report this month, according to The News-Journal story (linked above). Most are nursing tennis elbows after patting themselves on the back during the appropriately timed April Fool’s Day gathering.
The joke’s on Hoke County residents, though. Combined with the publicly billed price tag of $30 million, that brings the total Hoke County taxpayers have paid for an underutilized site—closer to Cumberland County residents than most of Hoke—to $33.5 million (including the $1 million land purchase pointed out by an alert reader in our previous coverage).
Originally, the new pool’s budget was projected at $8 million. Cost has swollen to more than four times that amount.
Stay tuned.