Ongoing community concerns and sub-contractors remaining unpaid continues to plague the Bombala and Cooma pool upgrade projects.

At an extraordinary Snowy Monaro Regional Council meeting last week, council voted to allocate an additional $588,793 to complete the upgrades of both pools.

Council voted to progress with the remaining works at each pool, citing about 14-weeks of work is left before the pools could be used.

Council also voted to authorise the CEO to pursue cost recovery measures against Dalski, the former prime contractor of the projects. Council will take immediate action to recover missing plant equipment purchased by Dalski for the projects.

At its April meeting, council terminated Dalski’s contract for delivering upgrades of each pool.

The extraordinary meeting saw council debate for four hours whether further funding should be allocated to progress works and if council should push ahead with the current design of the Bombala pool.

Council is planning for an approximate 400mm vertical separation between the pool edge (deck level) and the water surface.

Currently, the pool’s design is not a wet-edge, despite many Bombala community members and pool operator, Paul Perkins, calling for the new approach.

Cr Stewart had previously supported opening the pool this season with the current design but changed his stance following a wave of community support for a wet-edge design.

“After considerable thought, I don’t think the community deserves to be delivered something worse off than before. It’s up to the councillors to fix this problem,” Cr Stewart said.

“We need to deliver it properly, and it will be there for a lot of years to come. Any person involved in pools would say the current height and design is a step backwards.

“Now we are in a position where we need to bite the bullet, get a design out there where the pool can be fixed up properly and get a good outcome for the community.”

A council spokesperson said work will begin immediately to engage contractors to undertake the remaining works.

“An exemption from the need to obtain multiple quotes has been put into place due to the need to urgently get the works back underway. This will reduce the timeframes for work to re-commence,” the spokesperson said.

“Once contracts are in place, the physical works will proceed. Any final rectification of the work done so far will also be completed.

“Additionally, options will be developed to look at what would be required to reduce the distance between the water level and the pool lip at Bombala Pool.

“This will be reported back to a future council meeting for consideration, but will not delay getting the pool back in operation.”

Local sub-contractors who have told this masthead they are still owed thousands of dollars from Dalski, in some instances tens of thousands of dollars, said they were disappointed council did not discuss publicly any moves to repay them.

“We are still waiting to be paid from November. We know the contractor is responsible for paying us initially, but we believe council should step in and support us,” a sub-contractor working on the Cooma and Bombala pools said.

“We have more than just ourselves to support, we have families and workers to pay.”

Multiple Cooma businesses working for principal contractor, Dalski, said payments from the company stopped in November.

In the months since, local business owners, one owed more than $100,000, have called on Dalski and Snowy Monaro Regional Council to front up and pay them for their work.