POULSBO — The Poulsbo Marine Science Center reopens Saturday at 10 a.m., after five months to fix damage caused by a frozen sprinkler pipe that burst and flooded the building late last fall.

“I can hardly wait,” Aquarium Director Patrick Mus said in an earlier interview. “I’m constantly getting phone calls and emails. I’d like to get it open.”

Admission is free, but donations are accepted to help support the museum’s educational programs.

Mus said visitors will see new and familiar features in the center when it reopens. Aquarium residents include an octopus, perch, rockfish, wolf eel, and various crab species. The floating lab and the touch tank will be there, as well as a bull kelp and eelgrass exhibit, and an activities room for children.

Educating small children about the marine environment and seeing the wonder in their eyes is what Mus enjoys most about his job. “They learn that there’s something more than just waves on the water,” he said.

The reopening comes as the city and Marine Science Center Foundation hammer out a lease renewal. The City Council asked for a meeting with the foundation because council members have questions about the terms of the lease worked out by Mayor Becky Erickson and the foundation. The lease was up for approval Wednesday, but the council tabled it after admitting an error in some contract language – she said she wrote that the foundation must produce a compilation of financial statements, rather a more stringent audit.

Council members said they prefer audited reports to safeguard against the financial troubles that forced the closure of the Marine Science Center Foundation’s predecessor.

The City of Poulsbo owns the downtown property and building, and is responsible for building and site maintenance; its insurance covered the flooding damage repairs that city Finance Director Debbie Booher estimated at about $150,000. The foundation leases the building for free; its board members say that in exchange for a free lease the city gets a major downtown visitor destination and a marine educational center that is open to all. Some 30,000 people have visited the center over the past three years, according to the foundation.

But the foundation gets about $1,200 a month in donations and $40,000 a year from a sublease to Sealaska Environmental Services. City officials have been negotiating with the foundation for a portion of the center’s revenue, to be used for maintenance of the building. The foundation has offered the city $15,000 toward $30,000 in siding repairs, and agreed to revisit maintenance costs next year.

Erickson said significant repairs are needed, including a new heating and cooling system, that over the next three years will cost the city $180,000. Foundation board members have said they can get the work done for far less.

The center has weathered several storms since it was conceived. In the 1980s, local teacher Clayton Ham brought the Seattle-based Marine Science Society to Poulsbo, and the society operated a marine science center at Liberty Bay Marina. In 1990, it moved to its present location, which was built with a $650,000 bond issued to the Poulsbo Public Development Authority. Booher said the society paid the city about $1,000 a month rent, and the North Kitsap School District rented space in the center and provided marine science education there. Kitsap County also contributes funding to the center, which it views as being a benefit to the public.

The bond was refinanced in 2002 when the development authority was dissolved, and the city took ownership of the debt. But the school district pulled out of the partnership because of lack of money and, in 2005, the center closed.

In 2007, the center reopened under the management of a new Poulsbo Marine Science Foundation, but the foundation has not paid rent since reopening the center. Then, the flooding in November. Mus said a donor pulled his or her donations thinking the center was permanently closed.

Peter McCormick, senior program manager of Sealaska Environmental Services, said his environmental services office and the center are a good fit.

“We do environmental investigation and mediation work. We do a lot of work for Navy bases in the area,” he said. “It’s a good match. Our people volunteer downstairs. It’s a nice office space and we we like to support the Marine Science Center when we can.”

Sealaska Environmental Services has a total of 90 employees, and 23 work out of the office at the Marine Science Center.