As of: March 14, 2024, 5:45 p.m
By: Josef Hornsteiner
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Remains open: Operations at the Olympic swimming pool in Seefeld will continue despite the deficit.
© Heinz Holzknecht
The local council in Seefeld in Tyrol is fighting for its swimming pool.
Actually, it would have ended on March 31st, but now operations should continue in full after the overhaul.
Seefeld in Tyrol - The financially ailing Seefeld announced last year that it would partially close its swimming pool on March 31, 2024 for cost reasons.
Only the wellness area should remain open.
Now the about-face: In the first local council meeting under the new mayor of Seefeld Andrea Neuner (Seefeld move), the 14 local parliamentarians committed themselves to their paddling temple: The pool should continue to operate normally in the future.
The community's financial situation is known to be tense.
Although more is received than spent, subsidies for the World Cup sports facilities and the sports and congress center eat up the profit.
Neuner now announced to ORF Tirol that the pool will remain open until March 31st, then it will be overhauled “in order to start normal operations again at the beginning of June”.
Isartal residents will be particularly pleased
And what will particularly please the people of the Isar Valley without a swimming pool: the operation of the costly swimming pool is intended for the long term.
A decision by the local council to shut it down was never made.
The closure was “miscommunicated,” said Neuner.
As is well known, this caused quite a stir.
The Tyrol state administrator recently handed over the business to the municipality.
“We can service all loans,” assured the mayor, who was the only candidate elected in February, to ORF.
“Of course we have a mountain of debt, but we are not insolvent.” The municipality now wants to switch to radical austerity mode for four years.
“Then the situation will look different and we will then be able to make major investments again.”
The costs of the swimming pool should also be covered beyond that, which should please the people of the Isar Valley, who have been traveling to the Seefeld plateau in droves since the Mittenwald indoor swimming pool closed its doors forever in 2017.
The Seefeld swimming pool costs a whopping 700,000 euros annually.
The additional financial aftermath of the World Cup, amounting to half a million euros, is now to be covered from other surpluses.
The bank appointment is in March.
“Now we have to work out the right concepts and set the right course so that the indoor swimming pool operations last in the long term and were not just a short-term promise,” says Deputy Mayor Alexander Schmid (Active for Seefeld).