KEARNEY, Mo. — KSHB 41 News anchor Taylor Hemness reports on stories across Kansas, including a focus on consumer issues. You can contact Taylor by email.
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“Kearney needs a pool.”
That's what a mom who brought her kids to our Let's Talk event in Kearney last month told me when I asked her about a Kearney story I should be telling.
Even with school starting, there's plenty of time left for families to go swimming, so I thought I'd take a look.
It turns out the topic of a pool has been swirling around Kearney for years, and I found one family with more than one really good perspective.
Whitaker Steward just graduated a few months ago from Kearney High School, ending this stage of his swimming career as the most decorated swimmer in Missouri high school history.
That happened even though he doesn't compete or practice in Kearney.
"I tell them I'm from Kearney, and I'm on the Kearney swim team,” Whitaker told me. “They're like, ‘Oh, where do you have to practice? I don't think Kearney has a pool.’ And I'm like, ‘No. I have to go to Excelsior Springs or Clayview, or we have to get on this bus.’"
He described the challenges involved from an individual and team perspective.
"It kind of takes away from the whole team being at all the practices, because we're all driving in our separate cars," he told me.
Whitaker has been swimming competitively since he was about 5 years old. I asked him if he thinks his accomplishments are ironic.
"I don't want to say that it was unlikely," he said. "It definitely was a barrier, but you can always overcome those barriers."
And there have been multiple attempts to do just that.
I talked to Mayor Randy Pogue, who supports building a pool, about the history of this question.
The most recent attempt was a few years ago after the city bought a roughly 13-acre plot of land. Kearney commissioned a survey, held public meetings and settled on two ballot questions:
- Should the city issue 28 million dollars in bonds to build a pool and community center?
- Should the city impose a half-cent sales tax to pay for the maintenance of that facility?
Nearly 70% of voters said no ... to both.
"People want a pool,” Pogue said. “But we're not seeing the same voter support, not only for initiatives to fund the operating cost of a pool but to fund the construction and building of it as well."
Pogue said he didn't want to comment on why the vote failed so dramatically.
But Whitaker’s mom told me she knows exactly why it failed.
"The problem is, every time we talk about a pool in this community, it turns into a community center,” Laura Steward said during our interview in her office, just steps away from Kearney City Hall. “That's not what we're talking about. The tax basis in this town cannot support a 30-plus-million-dollar community center."
Laura told me her family, like many others, used to go to a privately owned pool in Kearney where young swimmers competed. She had memories of dozens of kids there.
That pool closed down years ago. Today, it sits empty and covered in overgrown bushes and shrubs.
"When we got rid of people being able to take swim lessons and participate in that community pool, the feeder program died, and every year, the [school] team gets smaller and does worse,” she said.
The push for a city pool has dominated much of Laura’s life over the last decade. That was very clear during our conversation.
But her tone in describing the push today, compared to years ago, is very different.
"I'm so disappointed in the way that it's gone, that it's hard to remain passionate about it," she told me. "Until we can say, community pool, separate of full-blown community center, it'll never happen."
But the Steward family still has a stake in the effort.
Whitaker's older brother Spencer, himself an accomplished swimmer, starts his new job as the assistant swim coach at Kearney High School this week.
He's proud of the great swimmers Kearney has produced, even without a city pool. He described how people outside Kearney would react when his team did well at competitions.
"They say, ‘What are they putting in the water up there in Kearney?' Nothing, nothing," Spencer said. "[We finished] fourth at state with four boys. The first two teams had 50 and 40 boys; we had four. That's what's in the water in Kearney."
And he tells me as far as he's concerned, this race isn't over yet.
"Eventually, we're gonna get this right,” Spencer said. “And then we're gonna start anew. When we build that pool — and I say when, not if, it will happen — it's game over."
There are other important notes on the back-and-forth of this pool, with many conversations held on a Facebook page Laura helps manage.
Laura told me that she worked extensively with Kearney’s former mayor, Bill Dane, to get a pool built in Kearney without the community center. She told me there was a plan well underway on another piece of property.
Back in 2015, Dane posted the details of that plan on his Facebook page, including involvement from the school district and funding from a Community Improvement District (CID) around The Shoppes at Kearney.
But Dane died in office in 2018.
Mayor Pogue was not an alderman at that point. But he announced the purchase of that 13-acre plot back in 2022, using funding from that same CID.
His spokesman told me he could not comment about previous pool discussions that might have been held before Pogue was an alderman.
I also spoke with Kearney Alderman Gerri Spencer, who was also on the board when Dane was in office, and a former Kearney school board member.
They both confirmed with me that there was discussion of a city pool.
The former school board member told me the district even discussed donating land and paying for an all-season cover over the pool. But he told me those were merely discussions, never actionable items for the district.
"Sadly, I do not see a pool passing in our community," Alderman Spencer said.
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