The Fayette City Pool will not open on Memorial Day weekend this year as planned due to a temporary shortage of lifeguards. The pool will instead open on Tuesday.

Every lifeguard hired for this summer is a member of the Fayette High School band, which left for its quadrennial trip to Washington D.C. at the end of the spring term on Thursday.

“I have no lifeguards,” said Danny Dougherty, the city’s director of public works. “They’ll all be back on Tuesday and they all said they can work.”

Also delayed will be the opening of the newly constructed splash park, which sits adjacent to the pool at the Fayette City Park. As was previously reported in this newspaper, the cement poured for the pad contains lignite which caused popouts on the surface. The city has withheld some payments for completion of the splash park until the cement is replaced.

The company in charge of construction, Ideal Landscaping, had promised the city the cement would be replaced in May so that the splash park would open on Memorial Day weekend. Based on that promise, the city council agreed in late March to make a good-faith payment in the amount of $25,000 toward the then final balance of $107,000. Now it appears that promise will go unfulfilled. Dougherty said re-construction of the pad will now take place during the week of June 6.

The issue of the cement was discovered last fall when the equipment was tested. Now more than half a year later the $321,900 splash park, which was funded entirely from donations, will still not be ready on time.