For the academy’s purposes a four-lane pool would be enough. To make it accessible for the people of the city as well, the plan was to increase the number of lanes to eight—at a cost to the city of some €2 million, as ERR’s radio news reported on Thursday.

Two months of negotiations led nowhere. The city government, led by the Center Party, are of the opinion that it would make more sense for the city to build a pool of its own.

According to the chairman of the Center Party group on the Narva city council, Aleksei Voronov, they seriously needed to consider why they should “give the Academy of Security Sciences two million” if they might as well build their own pool.

“One option is to get funding for a project to be created that would be financed out of environmental fees, and we’ve also planned meetings with Center Party ministers, the prime minister among them. They’re still our fellow party members, and because of this I hope that they won’t let us down,” Voronov explained the local party’s ambitions.

At the same time, they hadn’t entirely given up on the idea of accepting the Ministry of the Interior’s offer, he added.

According to rector of the academy, Katri Raik, that ship has sailed, and it is questionable that the city might get state funding for its own pool.

If the city of Narva was hoping for state support, then the question was why the state should spend money on a second swimming pool while already investing in a brand new one, Raik added.