Bald Eagle Township Donates $20K to Mill Hall Pool Fund

By Christopher Miller

BALD EAGLE TOWNSHIP – Bald Eagle Township, at their monthly supervisors meeting Monday evening, voted to approve a $20,000 donation to the Mill Hall Pool Fund.

Representatives from the Mill Hall Pool Committee were present to speak with Bald Eagle Township and the value of the pool in the local community.

“The Mill Hall Pool has always been a concern and we knew it was under duress with maintenance being an ongoing thing,” said Lenny Long, a representative of the pool committee.

“We worked very hard to get the DCNR grant and the time and effort paid off when we were awarded a $952,000 matching grant, and the borough took out a bank loan to help us with the matching funds, and we are just trying to raise enough to pay that back,” said Bob Dwyer, also with the pool committee.

In the past, the County Commissioners gave Mill Hall Borough $33,000 to conduct a feasibility study for the pool renovations.

The project went out to rebid recently, with a recent secretarial change at the borough office, with bids expected by mid-February.

“We are hoping the rebid doesn’t change the price too much,” Long said. “We know we are looking at a $2 – $2.1 million rebuild of the pool.”

The current pool, now in it’s 54th year, has been running in an approximate $100,000 budget each year, with close to a quarter of that being spent on annual repairs and maintenance to bring it operational.

“We’re putting bandaids on bandaids to be able to open it every year and we just need to be able to rebuild it from the ground up,” Long said.

The committee has been working to identify other grants and opportunities through Cris Dush, Stephanie Borowicz, and Glenn Thompson’s offices in Harrisburg and D.C. respectively. They have also employed the help of Clinton County Engineer Steve Gibson with grant writing.

“We are now reaching out to other neighboring municipalities, corporations, and private donors for help,” Long said.

“The pool is such a nice part of the community with reunions being held there, and sporting events, it gets lots of use and we would love to be able to do more like discounted pool admission for in between kids sporting events, and possible transportation to the pool directly in the summer, and if the Hogan Boulevard sidewalk project takes off, those could all be streams of revenue for the pool,” Dwyer said.

Tom Bossert also added that int he 54 years of the Mill Hall Pool, “there has never been a drowning there.”

Bald Eagle Township Chairman Steve Tasselli remarked, adding his memories of going to the pool “as a young boy” and he expressed his appreciation for the group leading the charge to rebuild it.

On a unanimous vote, supervisors voted to donate $20,000 towards the Mill Hall Pool Fund in 2025.

Pool Committee Representatives will be attending neighboring township and borough meetings in the near future to state their case for the pool and the costly renovations.