NORWICH – The Kurt Beyer Pool faces another summer without repair after the Joint Committees discussed the fate of the pool Tuesday night, citing that no money is available to make necessary repairs and that it will have to be closed another year.

When city officials were forced to close the pool, it was originally thought work would be completed and the pool reopen by June this year; however, the denial of the city’s application for grant money from the State Environmental Protection Fund in December and the lack of funding available in this year’s city budget will likely keep the pool from opening in 2012.

The pool is in need of a new filtration system, electrical system and gunite to seal the inside and around the pool – projects accumulating a total cost of $251,845. After closing last summer, swimmers had the option of using the pool at the Norwich High School, but usage dropped off severely.

Alternatives including membership fees and per use fees ranging from $1 to $4.35 have been discussed to help offset the cost of repairs, but not knowing how the implementation of such charges would affect attendance, council members argued that having such a program in place would allow a debt without the sure means of paying it off.

“We’re really between a rock and a hard place ... I’d like to see the pool open this year; we closed it last year as a temporary thing,” said Walter Schermerhorn, Fourth Ward Alderman, but other council members noted that this was based on the premise that the city would qualify for grant money and William Roberts, city clerk, affirmed there was no room in the budget to pay for any of the needed repairs.

To save on the project, the council also discussed repairing the filtration system without adding the proposed gunite – which would save more than $100,000 on the project – but the notion was adamantly opposed by Public Works Superintendent Carl Ivarson, who said the gunite is a necessary component in the project and the pool hasn’t been resealed in more than two decades.