Pool manager hired; New River pool likely to open in June

May 26—The city of Beckley has found a pool manager.

After announcing in April that Beckley's pools would not open due to the lack of a pool manager, Beckley Parks and Recreation Director Leslie Gray Baker said she has hired a pool manager who will start in June.

Baker said she offered the pool manager position to Ashleigh Sexton, a Raleigh County school teacher recruited by AtWork, a local hiring agency.

Even though she will be managing one pool, Sexton will be paid $20 an hour. When the pool manager position was first posted in January, the salary was advertised in the range of $15-$20 an hour to manage both pools.

Having secured a pool manager and 11 lifeguards through a contract with AtWork, Baker said her target opening date for the Sharon Dempsey Memorial pool at New River Park is June 8.

The Black Knight pool will not open this year, Baker said.

With only one pool to manage, Baker said she's hoping her new pool manager will have the time she needs to adjust to her new role.

"Since she is a new pool manager, I didn't want her to be torn to run back and forth between the two pools," Baker said adding that it just "made more sense" to only focus on opening the Sharon Dempsey pool given their staffing troubles.

To open the Sharon Dempsey by June 8, Baker said there is still one major task that must be completed.

"We still need the pool painted, but the weather's not cooperating," she said. "It has to be like five days of 50 or above. So that's what we're waiting on. And then once we paint it, it has to cure. Then it takes three days to fill the pool up. So we're hoping for June 8, but if the weather doesn't get any better, it might be pushed back just a few more days."

She added that they typically only have to paint small sections of the pool but, after a recent visit from the Beckley-Raleigh Health Department, Baker said they were told the entire pool needed to be painted before opening this year.

Baker said she is still waiting for the paint, which cost roughly $8,000, to be delivered.

It takes a village

Pool maintenance needs aside, Baker said there is no way she'd even be talking about opening the pool this year if it weren't for all the help she received from local businesses and donors.

"It takes a village," Baker said. "None of us could have done this on our own."

Baker said the support started with the YMCA of Southern West Virginia, which started training and certifying lifeguards in the winter.

"We saw the importance of needing the pool for the community and just something for kids to do in West Virginia, so this year, our aquatics director actually started classes in January, when typically we wouldn't start those until April — late March or April," said Mathew Bishop, chief operation officer for the Y.

Since January, Bishop said the Y has offered at least three lifeguard training classes a month and has been able to get 44 lifeguards certified.

Bishop said they still have one more lifeguard certification class beginning in early June, with 10 people already signed up. The Carter Foundation, the Kelly Foundation and local attorney Chris Lefler have also made contributions to the city, the Y and AtWork to help with the training of lifeguards.

Noah Kapp, vice president of AtWork, said AtWork stepped in almost immediately after news broke that Beckley's city pools would not be opening and has spent the last six weeks advertising, recruiting and sending lifeguards to the Y to get trained.

From posts on social media to job fairs and daily announcement at local high schools, Kapp said his employees went above and beyond knowing just how important it was to the community to have a fun and safe place to go this summer.

He said he also knew how important it was for the city to find a pool manager who not only had the right certifications but was also mature enough to take on the task of managing teenage lifeguards and a pool full of kids.

"That was one of the big things. When I went and talked to the city council, they're like, 'We need a pool manager. That was our hang up last year,'" Kapp said.

Kapp said not only is Sexton a teacher, she is a a coach.

"I think she's going to fit really well in this environment," Kapp said. "She's also certified as a lifeguard, which is something that they were needing this year."

As part of the city's contract with AtWork, the company will receive $100 per week per employee for every week that employee works. Kapp said he estimated that this contract will cost the city $9,000.

Even with the lifeguarding staff secured for the city of Beckley, the local partnerships that made it possible will remain active.

Cat Gunther, aquatics director for the Y, said she has volunteered to mentor the city's new pool manager without charge.

"If you've never been around pools, it is a rude wake-up call," Gunther said. "There's a lot that goes to it. It's not just staffing lifeguards and making sure everybody's safe. You've got chemicals to deal with. You've got — people call in all the time. It has various sundries of complications and it's not an easy job. So I wanted to offer my assistance just to help her out this season."

Baker said one of the park's maintenance employees also earned a CPO (certified pool operator) license last year, meaning he knows how to manage and maintain all the chemicals in the pool.

After the debacle of last year when an out-of-state company was tasked with managing and staffing Beckley's pools, returning lifeguards Eden Honaker and Evan Laraba said they're looking forward to answering to someone they can see every day.

"There was a lot of issues with communication with some of the management we had in place," Honaker said. "Like me and Leslie (Baker) were not allowed to speak to each other last year due to the company that we were with. So that made it really, really difficult to figure out things that needed to happen here."

Last year the city paid USA Pools/USA Management $130,000 to manage, staff and operate its two pools. The city is in litigation with USA Pools to recoup some of those funds after USA Pools was unable to staff both pools for the whole 2022 season.

Honaker and Laraba, both 18, are returning to Beckley after wrapping up their first year of college and say they're happy to have a job to return to.

"I don't live too far (from the pool)," Laraba said. "Literally two to three minutes down the street. And I know a lot of the kids that come to this pool so I enjoy getting to hang out with them ... I just like working here."