Editor's note: This letter to the former NCCA committee members was received by The Newtown Bee for publication.

To the Newtown Community Center Advisory Committee:

I have been an avid swimmer since childhood and have swum in YMCA and community pools all over the country and abroad, from Singapore to London. I would like to share my knowledge with the community center planners, in hopes that Newtown can realize the original vision of a 50-meter pool.

I encourage officials, volunteers, and the design team to visit the Wilton YMCA, where I swim in a 50-meter pool that, in warm weather, is a beautiful and inviting outdoor pool open to the sun and skies and, in cold weather, is housed in a soaring, weather-proof bubble that connects directly into the Y's dressing rooms and main building. This pool is transformed three times every day, in a 15-minute procedure that can be done by a single lifeguard, from a 6-lane, 50-meter long course pool into two 6-lane, 25-yard pools (for a total of 12 short course lanes), which are used by local swim teams, and then back again into a long course pool.

There is no need for Newtown to build a building in order to have a 50-meter pool.

There are plenty of 25-yard pools in our area and another short, inevitably crowded, indoor facility will not add anything special to our town. A 50-meter outdoor pool, however, will give residents a truly unique community center. In the summer there would be enough space for lap lanes alongside open swim for the entire family. In the winter the bubble goes up (in Wilton that process takes place over a weekend.) It could also be a source of significant revenue as swimmers in neighboring towns would inevitably want to use it and be willing to pay for the privilege. Serious swimmers will go to great lengths to swim in an Olympic size pool. A 50-meter pool would also be in demand by swim teams - yet another source of revenue.

Please take a drive to Wilton and see for yourselves. I believe Newtown can have a better, more flexible, more welcoming pool with money left over to make the community center building its original planned size.

Amber Edwards

40 Parmalee Hill Road, Newtown         March 27, 2017