The Carbondale Aquatics Center has been in the works since 2020 and was originally approved with an 8 million dollar budget. Six years later the costs have ballooned to almost 13 and a half million. In response to this hike in costs the town of Carbondale launched its Make a Splash Fundraising Campaign to gather support from donors and avoid raising taxes. Here’s Carbondale Mayor Ben Bohmfalk speaking with KDNK in December.
" There's almost $500,000 that it would be great to also close, but we've made sure from the town budget that that's covered.
So at this point, it's really about how healthy is our reserve fund for Park and Rec. Um, because we don't really know exactly what the operating cost will be on the pool for the first year. You know, it's, it's Colorado. I think Colorado's first all electric outdoor municipal pool that's a hundred percent electric, not backed up by gas or anything.
And so, you know, there will be some big electric bills. We added a big solar array to try to help offset that. There's gonna be more staff to have more hours and to have three bodies of water open whenever the pool's open. And so we're really excited about it. But yeah, ultimately we've raised I think it's almost $2 million."
On January 14th, the town announced that it had reached its fundraising goal of 2.1 million dollars. The money came from over 500 families, civic organizations, grants, and individual donors.
This in combination with another $2.3 million from Carbondale’s reserve funds and the original $8 million bonded against the town’s tax revenue plus interest, means the Aquatics Center can be fully paid for without additional burden to the taxpayer. The facility is set to open in the spring of 2026.
