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WATERTOWN, N.Y. — Discussions about the proposed $49.2 million 2011-2012 city budget continued Wednesday evening as the Watertown City Council received feedback from some city departments.

“This is probably the barest (budget) that I’ve put forward in the last 24 years,” said Eugene P. Hayes, superintendent of the Department of Public Works. “There’s no gadgets.”

Tensions quickly arose between Councilman Jeffrey M. Smith and Hayes as the City Council began discussions about funding for the city’s three public pools.

“There has been whisperings, which we all know of, of closing a city pool,” Councilman Jeffrey M. Smith said. “I suspect that one pool is on staff’s mind to close and that would be Thompson Park pool.”

While Hayes admitted the Thompson Park Municipal Swimming Pool would be the one least worthy of investment over, Smith accused the superintendent of intentionally failing to tell the City Council about the pool’s “disrepair.”

“There is nothing further from the truth,” Hayes said. “For me to do that to you is not criminal, but would be terrible. The only thing worse than that is for someone to intimate that I would do that.”

Hayes said the cost to revamp all pools was estimated to be $357,500 with an option to spread costs out over three years by renovating them one by one.

City Manager Mary M. Corriveau added that the Thompson Park Municipal Swimming Pool sees the highest number of patrons, 5,200 each year, with Steve D. Alteri Swimming Pool trailing at 5,000 visitors each year and William J. Flynn Swimming pool accommodating about 2,800.

“Until you close the pool, we will maintain all three in the most logical order that we can,” Hayes told Smith.

While insisting her idea was not a proposal, Councilwoman Roxanne M. Burns said other cities in the process of downtown revitalization have transformed their public fountains into “sprinkle pools,” which largely attract families with children to those areas.

“I think it’s something that might be an interesting thing for us to consider in the future,” Burns said. “There have been a lot of communities that have revitalized their downtown based on that because they might have some sort of water feature.”

The councilwoman touted a “sprinkle pool” by saying it would be less of a burden for parents worried about their children swimming in “deep” city pools.

Discussions soon turned to the Ogilvie site, which was to be an 18-home development built by Neighbors of Watertown Inc., where city workers earlier this year discovered two fuel tanks, one of which is 1,300 gallons, buried underneath the shock rock.

“Why spend $400,000 to clean it up if we’re not going to use it,” Councilman Joseph M. Butler, Jr., asked Kenneth A. Mix, the city’s planning and community development director.

Mix said the budgeted number represents the cost of site cleanup and moving the shock rock somewhere else off-site.

“I think we have an obligation to get that cleaned out of there and do something with it,” Graham said.

The city manager mentioned state funding had “dried up” for the projected project. The city was to build at 620-foot road, named after former Mayor Joseph M. Butler, for $1 million.

“We know we’ve got clean up work to do, we left that in this budget and we’re going to continue working on that,” Corriveau said. “To put a street in at this point in time, until we know there’s funding that might support building the housing, this doesn’t seem like a smart use for land.

Corriveau said the city does have a grant that will help pay for the removal of fuel tanks remaining in the ground.