In the spring of 2023, schoolchildren in Guéret, in Creuse, will once again be able to learn to swim in their town. No more time-consuming bus journeys to reach the aquatic center of La Souterraine, half an hour away. With the “Macron plan” for the creation-renovation of five thousand local sports facilities, announced in October 2021 by the Presidency of the Republic, the municipality of the capital of the department has acquired three mobile swimming pools.
The latter, which represent a cost of 100,000 euros excluding taxes (including 20,000 euros for the city), should have been in operation at the start of the school year, but water restrictions have postponed their filling. Even delayed “It’s a welcome workaround”, rejoices the mayor, Marie-Françoise Fournier. The installation will partly put an end to more than two years of difficulty. In the fall of 2020, the municipal swimming pool had been closed for “imminent peril”. “The building was over 60 years old, its roof was in danger of collapsing”details the chosen one.
Pending the construction, over the next five years, of an aquafun complex within the Greater Guéret conurbation, these mobile pools will make available to the school public, “in May 2023 at the most”, a place for learning to swim. A legal obligation to which the town hall currently responds by financing the transport and the reservation of water lines in peripheral pools.
Like more than a thousand municipalities in France, Guéret has had recourse to the support plan for local sports facilities, the objective of which, on the horizon of the 2024 Olympic Games, is to co-finance five thousand small sports “fields” in deficient territories, through a total investment of 200 million euros.
According to the report established on October 6 by the National Sports Agency (ANS), “85 million euros” were paid for 2,089 pieces of equipment in nine months, allowing the financing of 50% to 80% of the cost of skate parks, basketball courts for three players against three (3 × 3), weight training areas and even multi-sports facilities …
The acclaimed multisport platforms
“Over 75%” of the beneficiary communities are in rural areas. In the heart of Creuse, Saint-Médard-la-Rochette has seized the opportunity to carry out a project that has been under consideration since 2020. In this town of 590 inhabitants, sports associations are dormant. “The village hall, which served as the table tennis club, has been under construction for a year, and the football stadium has been unused for fifteen years”underlines Eric Benhammou, deputy mayor.
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