New Richland Community Education’s swimming lessons were scheduled to start their first of three sessions last week, but due to the potential harm of St. Olaf Lake, they had to be canceled.
The New Richland City Council discussed a potential solution to fix the swimming lessons situation, as they met on June 10, the week before the lessons were supposed to start. The council also discussed the city’s signs at Legion Field not permitting golf carts, ATVS, and UTVs down by the field.
Swimming lessons
Late last month, the city of New Richland was notified by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency that St. Olaf Lake may contain a blue green algae that may be harmful to humans and pets. This put swimming lessons put on by the New Richland Community Education in jeopardy as their first session of lessons was supposed to start on May 17.
New Richland city staff contemplated on what to do, as they didn’t want to cancel the first session of lessons completely as they had 31 students enroll in it. The city first contacted Steele County to possibly do lessons out on Beaver Lake, but they were concerned with people seeing life guards out there and taking advantage of that.
New Richland City Administrator Anthony Martens then suggested that they should get ahold of Geneva to use their city pool, and Assistant City Clerk Heather Christiansen contacted Geneva City Clerk Jannell Tufte.
Tufte was glad that the city reached out to her as Geneva did not have any lifeguards signed up for their pool, but they had multiple kids who wanted to work the concession stands. Both Christiansen and Tufte thought it would be a good idea to move all three of the sessions to the geneva pool and open up the concession stands there.
“We had talked about just doing the first session out there and thought it should be all of it because they;re not going to want to put out the dock and the raft and clean it up for one week’s session,” Christiansen said. “It’s either all or none.”
As for St. Olaf Lake, some parents were okay with having the lessons out there, but some parents were still hesitant.
“I know I’ve heard a lot of people saying St. Olaf looks good and it doesn’t smell,” said Christiansen. “A lot of people are still ‘well I don’t know if I’d have my kids still go there this year,’ so there’s just a lot of fear over it unfortunately.”
Council member Janda Ferguson agreed that the swimming lessons should not have taken place at St. Olaf Lake for the first session.
“I think with the safety of the lake, I mean it’s probably fine, but it’s so close to that three weeks that they said, so why would we put them in possible jeopardy,” Ferguson said regarding the Pollution Control Agency’s recommendation of waiting three weeks until going into St. Olaf Lake.
The council agreed to have the swimming lessons relocated to Geneva, but the Geneva City Council still had to approve it at their meeting the night after. The council ended up not approving the city of New Richland to have their swimming lessons at the geneva pool.
New Richland Community Education ended up canceling their first session of swimming lessons and are looking to reschedule. The next session of lessons will take place in July with the last session taking place in August at St. Olaf Lake, as it will be safe to have activities take place there at that time.
Legion Field
The council discussed signs at Legion Field that were put up by the city not permitting golf carts, ATVs, and UTVs by the field, since a few people called Mayor Loren Skelton about it.
New Richland Chief of Police Tanyce Bruegger said the signs were put up due to the grass getting torn up by the vehicles, safety concerns regarding little kids running around, and city ordinances stating that the vehicles are not to be driven anywhere except on roadways and parking lots.
Brueger had a meeting with city maintenance regarding the issue that took place before the council meeting.
“We discussed at the meeting if this was something that could be put up potentially for all those reasons,” Bruegger said. “We did discuss that if you do have a physical ailment of some kind it’s totally fine, it’s just for those that are able to walk.”
Bruegger and the council agreed that the signs should be there for liability reasons. Ferguson brought up how the city could reach out and try to receive a grant to have a roadway path for the vehicles by the field.
“It’s something to talk down the road about possibly looking for grant funding to see if there’s some type of roadway path for ATVs to go there,” said Ferguson. “Then it would be legal for anybody to use that.”
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