O’Donnells eye non-profit for facility honoring Maisey
Select Board members pledged their support as town counsel reviews the non-profit proposal.
Soon after the April car accident that ended their daughter Maisey’s life, Betsy and Christoph O’Donnell knew they wanted to honor her with something she would have loved.
Now, the O’Donnells and their supporters are proposing a plan to ensure their effort to build the Maisey O’Donnell Dryland Training Room stays on track. “We don’t want this to get lost in the long list of other municipal projects,” family friend Lowell “Sandy” Smith told the Select Board October 6.
Betsy O’Donnell said Maisey was “a somewhat shy child,” and the Beede Swim and Fitness Center was where “she really became her best self.”
On the way to becoming a state champion diver, Maisey often wished for “dryland” equipment that lets athletes safely practice new skills, her parents said.
The Beede pool complex is on the Acton-Carlisle High School campus. The town leases the land from the school.
Members of the Recreation Commission and the School Committee have endorsed the addition. This week, Smith said “there’s a compelling case” to run the effort through the non-profit C.C. Pools Inc., which oversaw Beede’s construction.
Christoph O’Donnell said the family had rallied donations and pledges to cover the full cost of the dryland center, which could run close to $1 million.
Non-profits aren’t subject to the same procurement laws as municipal governments. Cost savings of up to 30% could let the O’Donnells reserve more money in an endowment to maintain and replace equipment.
Select Board Chair Mark Howell said town counsel was reviewing the non-profit proposal. He and other board members pledged their support, even as officials iron out the details.
Maisey and two other CCHS seniors, Jimmy McIntosh and Hannah Wasserman, died after their SUV and a tractor-trailer collided on a stretch of highway in the western Florida panhandle.
