YAKIMA, Wash. — The City of Yakima has cancelled April Pools Day, the the annual free swimming and water safety event at Lions pool, due to scheduling conflicts with a project to install a new HVAC system.
"It's unfortunate, but it's needed," said Jason Zeller, recreation program supervisor for the City of Yakima. "It's definitely something that's gonna help the facility in the long run."
Zeller said they had planned to shut down for the month of April for the installation to take place and determined they needed to cancel the event.Â
"Later on, we found out that the part that we needed was pushed back and so we weren't going to be able to shut down until May," Zeller said. "So because of that, we weren't able to do some of our events like April Pools Day. We also had to cut into some of our swim lessons too."
Zeller said the plan is now to close in May and reopen in time for kids' summer vacation — this time with a new HVAC system, which he said is sorely needed. On Wednesday afternoon, Zeller said the temperature inside the building was 90 degrees and the humidity was about 90%.
"The way it currently stands, we feel like Florida; it's very, very warm in here," Zeller said. "Honestly, the HVAC system is going to change everything in here."
In the meantime, Zeller said they're continuing with programs like lap swim, water walking, recreational swimming and water aerobics. More information about programs at Lions Pool are available online here.
Emily Goodell joined the KAPP/KVEW team in February 2019.
Emily was born in raised in Yakima, where she currently works as our Yakima Bureau Chief. She’s worked in nearly every journalism medium, but above all else, her passion is investigative reporting. At the Yakima Herald-Republic, Emily worked as a breaking news, city government and crime and courts reporter. She’s served as a city government and education reporter at the Ellensburg Daily Record, a freelance journalist for Yakima Valley Publishing and as Northwest Public Broadcasting’s Yakima Correspondent.
Emily completed a news reporting internship with Spokane Public Radio and an arts and culture reporting internship with The Inlander, an alternative urban weekly in Spokane, Wash.
She also covered censorship and freedom of the press issues facing student media across the nation at the Student Press Law Center in Washington, D.C. Emily graduated from Whitworth University in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism & Mass Communication.
In college, Emily worked with her colleagues and researchers at Florida International University on a collaborative project looking at the experiences of women working as professionals in the communication field. Throughout her high school and college career, Emily competed in speech and debate tournaments at the regional, state and national level.
Emily is an avid traveler. Within the U.S., she’s visited 16 states and the District of Columbia. Outside the country, she’s also been to Canada, the United Kingdom and South Africa. While in Durban, South Africa, Emily was more than 10,000 miles away from her hometown — about as far as you can get.
