Memorial Park Swimming Pool in Butler has been closed since August 2004. The cost to repair or replace the pool are prohibitive. Officials are considering their options.

With Butler’s community swimming pool vacant and abandoned for more than a decade, there is little or no hope that the city will ever see it — or anything like it — revived, according to elected officials and those familiar with the issue.

Memorial Park Swimming Pool has been closed since August 2004, when it was shuttered because of problems with its water filtration system and depth — the pool is too shallow and doesn’t meet state safety regulations. Both the pool and its bathhouse also were in dire need of repairs. A 2006 study by Pittsburgh-based Pashek Associates estimated the cost for that work at $250,000.

But members of the community weren’t ready to let the pool go, and council member Kathy Kline, in 2007, expressed hope that the pool would reopen the following year. Meanwhile, a fundraising group led by teachers at Broad Street Elementary School had began holding a series of events to raise money for the initiative. First the group honed in on repairing and reopening the pool itself, but that goal ultimately changed to converting the land into a spray park.

By 2011 the group — then known as Support our Spray Park — had raised about $25,000. But the pool remained closed and another study by Pashek Associates — this one done in 2014 at the urging of the Butler A.M. Rotary Club — came with more bad news.

That study pegged the cost of constructing a spray park at $800,000, and estimated that construction would take 15 months. Pashek’s report also concluded that it would cost $30,000 per year to run the water park — half of the $60,000 annual cost associated with operating a pool at Memorial Park, but still far too expensive for the city to handle.

The estimates represented tens of thousands of dollars Butler City didn’t have, said Dick Musko, a past president of the club who helped run its $500,000 project to construct a playground at Alameda Park in Butler Township from 2002 to 2005.

Musko said club members, confident in their ability to manage large-scale projects like a pool revival, had hoped that the feasibility study would help jump-start fundraising for the initiative. Instead, Pashek’s cost estimates ended up burying it.

“The cost was going to be so great that we had no one that wanted to move forward with it,” Musko said. “The problem was that the city would not have the funds to do the annual maintenance after it was turned over to them.”

That fact hasn’t changed in the years since, say city officials. Butler managed to avoid predictions of fiscal catastrophe last year, but despite carrying a small surplus into its current budget, the city is still far from financially healthy. Elected officials say they don’t believe opening a pool or spray park is a reasonable goal.

“It’s a noble goal,” said Mayor Tom Donaldson. “Fiscally, I don’t think it (running a pool) is something the city will ever be able to do again.”

Donaldson pointed to the city’s large population of nonprofits and the high cost of providing public services as financial pressures. He also expressed concerns that a pool would ultimately cater more to delinquents and the jobless than taxpayers.

“With the large concentration of subsidized housing in the city, who are we opening the pool for?” Donaldson said. “The taxpayers or the people who are living off the backs of the taxpayers? Who’s going to be there?”

Council member Corey Roche said he wants the city to move on from the idea that a pool will return to Butler, and explore how to do something useful with the land it occupies.

“I don’t think it’s feasible to bring it back,” Roche said. “It’s sat dormant for at least 10 years now. I think we need to find out what to do with the land, instead of letting it sit vacant.”

Former councilman Bill May made a similar proposal in early 2015, and in March of that year council members authorized city solicitor Jim Coulter to look into whether the pool could be sold.

Ideas ranged from constructing a dek hockey rink at the site — a plan that would cost about $100,000 — to turning the land into green space or selling it to a housing developer. Whatever city officials ultimately decided, it seemed likely to cost tens of thousands of dollars. At the time, city officials estimated that it would cost more than $30,000 to simply fill the pool in.

Ultimately, nothing came of May’s proposal, and the pool has remained vacant and abandoned.

The money collected by Support Our Spray Park has mostly dried up as well. The group had raised about $33,000 as of 2013-14, according to the city’s financial records. About $17,000 of that was used to pay for the Pashek Associates feasibility study the same year and the rest has since been diverted to other parks and recreation projects. Currently the fund, which is now called the Parks and Rec Fund, has a balance of $800 according to the city.

Musko said the lack of a public pool continues to be a glaring omission to the city’s repertoire of public recreation offerings. The nearest public pool is at Alameda Park in Butler Township, about 2.5 miles from the city center. And while some communities in southern Butler County have embarked on expensive, long-term projects to refurbish or install public pools, the topic hasn’t been broached in Butler for some time now.

“It’s just one of those things that’s a big need, but there’s just no funds for it,” Musko said. “It would all depend on the city. The Rotary would probably get back in and put together a program, but someone would have to maintain it.”

Council member Kathy Kline did not return messages left seeking comment for this article.