Johnson City Manager fleshes out Freedom Hall Pool fiasco

Johnson City Manager Cathy Ball said the city is "actively working on a solution" to mitigate the swim community's loss of Freedom Hall Pool. In an interview Thursday, Ball explained the breakdown of communication about the pool's closure and the timeline leading up to the announcement that left swimmers, coaches and some elected officials feeling that they were blindsided. "The city is actively working on a solution and we are actively doing it in conjunction with the school system," Ball said. "We want to be able to partner with the school system on this solution. We understand what it means to the youth of our community and to our young athletes who use this as an outlet and a potential to develop. We fully understand that, and we take that very seriously." Lack of communication about when the pool was set to close has been a point of public concern. The swim coach and school board members for Johnson City Schools have said they did not know about the decision to close the pool until the city's public announcement to media. "We felt like we had communicated with the school in the most effective way that we could and with the peers at the school to inform them and keep them up to date on what was happening during all the phases of this process," Ball said. Ball did not directly place blame on the school system for miscommunications, but did say she does "not believe it was on the city's part." "We regret that there was miscommunication or a failure in the breakdown of that communication," Ball said. "I do not believe it was on the city's part." Ultimately, Ball said she did not want Freedom Hall Pool to damage the city and school system's relationship. "It is imperative to our whole community that the city and the school work together, and we do not want this to hurt that relationship at all," Ball said. "But we feel like we did everything we could to make sure that our communication was open and transparent with the schools through the whole process." "Even as early as the September timeframe, there was communication in trying to understand what the schedule was for the swim team and when the swim season occurred, and trying to make sure that the swim team could make it through their scheduled season," Ball said. "So that's when we learned, very early on, that there was a need for the school to have the pool open through the middle of February. So that was the driver for a lot of the communication that we had with them from that time forward on, trying to work with them on the closure of the pool." According to Ball, mid-September marked the first communication between city leadership and school system employees about the results from the engineering estimates and aquatics feasibility study. Ball said she began communicating herself directly with the Johnson City Schools superintendent in December and continued with updates in January and February, leading up to the closure announcement. A structural shoring report produced by city-contracted architect firm Cain Rash West (CRW) documented in January 2025 that there was a "critical need for immediate and comprehensive intervention" to the pool's "structural challenges." The second phase of CRW's contract required the productions of structural drawings. The city did not receive the report that contained both the structural assessment and drawings until August, according to city management at a joint work session between the school board and commission on April 2. After receiving the complete report in August and finalizing a separate aquatics feasibility study, city staff presented the findings to city commissioners during its work session on Nov. 20. Ball said that she and her staff have recently met with representatives from CRW to reevaluate the costs to repair Freedom Hall Pool now that it's been drained. Originally, the price to repair was reported to total up to $747,000. She also said her staff would also be doing the same with the company that conducted the aquatics feasibility study, which estimated the cost and timeline to construct a new aquatics center. "I think once we get those numbers back and see if they've changed drastically — we also have asked the folks who did the aquatics center [estimate] to give us an updated estimate on the length of time that it would cost to build the aquatic center." Ball said she hopes to have more information ready for commission presentation about repair costs and outlook for a new aquatics center by May 7. "We're hopeful, by the meeting on May 7, that we will have all of that information pulled together and have more data that would help the commission have a better informed decision," Ball said.